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THE  FIGHTING  MAN 


•  •••  ^ 

•t ••     • • 


c  <  »        c  r  <  I 


William  A.  Brady 


THE 
FIGHTING  MAN 


By 
WILLIAM  A.  BRADY 


With  Many  Photographs 


»  > . »  »  >  » 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


c  c  1^ IS  J 


Copyright  1916 
Thk  Bobbs-Me&aill  Compant 


»  ••• 


•  ••••»;# 


•     •  •.  • 


pKisa  or 

■  NAUNWCHTH   A  CO. 

FRINTIRS   ANO   BOOKBINOCIIS 

•ROOKLVN.   N.  y. 


THE  FIGHTING  MAN 


THE 
FIGHTING  MAN 


I  TAKE  it  for  granted  that  the  public  is  not 
much  interested  in  my  career  except  where  it 
touches  the  careers  of  famous  men.  Therefore 
I  shall  dwell  but  lightly  on  my  very  eaxly 
years. 

I  make  no  pretense  at  greatness  unless  that 
quality  lie  in  the  developing  of  greatness  in 
others.  If  I  were  to  claim  that  I  discovered 
other  men  through  sheer  accident,  or,  so  to 
speak,  had  their  greatness  thrust  upon  me,  I 
would  be  guilty  of  cheap  affectation.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  I  have  the  rare  quality  of  dis- 
cerning quality  in  others.  Developing  a  valu- 
able quality  when  discovered,  exploiting  it, 

ivil46393 


2"'-''    THE    IFIGHTING   MAN 

making  it  available  along  profitable  lines,  are 
matters  of  executive  ability. 

I  see  no  reason  to  apologize  for  the  very  fre- 
quent reference  to  myself  that  I  shall  have  to 
make  in  this  work.  In  order  to  avoid  doing 
so  I  would  have  to  use  awkward  and  tedious 
circumlocution.  I  shall  therefore  talk  of  my- 
self as  I  see  fit,  but,  as  the  reader  will  see,  I 
shall  try  to  be  fair. 

To  those  who  have  never  heard  about  me  I 
might  state  as  an  excuse  for  my  presumption 
in  writing  about  myself  and  also  as  authority 
for  the  statements  that  I  shall  make  and  the 
views  I  may  advance,  that  I  practically  began 
my  career  as  a  "peanut  butcher"  on  the  South- 
ern Pacific  Railroad,  and  that  I  am  to-day  pay- 
ing the  railroads  of  the  United  States  some- 
thing like  four  hundred  thousand  dollars  a 
year  for  the  transporting  of  my  companies  of 
players  and  properties. 

I  have  been  successful  in  many  things,  and 
I  have  almost  always  undertaken  big  things. 
I  have  demonstrated  to  myself  that  it  is  easier 
to  do  big  things  than  to  do  little  things.    There 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  3 

is  an  inspiration  in  it  and  the  acquiring  of 
the  superior  strength  that  inspiration  always 
gives,  the  touching  of  the  spring  of  unknown 
sources  of  strength  in  us.  Doing  big  things 
makes  us  energetic  to  the  highest  pitch.  That's 
why  we  say  a  man  who  is  doing  great  things 
is  drunk  with  power — ^that  it  has  turned  his 
head  I  The  fact  is  it  has  lifted  him  into  a  higher 
stratum  of  activity. 

As  I  have  always  tackled  big  jobs,  my  fail- 
ures have  been  quite  as  gigantic  and  even  more 
spectacular  than  my  successes.  But  there's  a 
mighty  stimulation  in  a  tremendous  failure — 
something  like  being  pushed  under  Niagara. 
It  is  a  shock,  a  blow  in  the  face — ^it  has  in  it 
none  of  the  soul-destroying  action  of  a  series 
of  petty  failures  and  disappointments.  But, 
best  of  all,  it's  a  great  advertisement. 

I  don't  know  how  I  got  the  notion,  but  I 
got  it  somehow  when  I  was  very  yoimg,  and 
it  was  that  a  man  should  be  known  as  a  fight- 
ing man.  It  may  have  come  to  me  from  my 
experience  in  school  where  I  held  my  own  with 
my  fists  rather  than  with  my  head.    This  gave 


4  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

me  a  reputation  that — although  most  of  it  was 
bluff — stood  me  in  good  stead  and  kept  many 
of  the  bigger  boys  from  infringing  on  my 
rights.  On  the  other  hand,  it  may  have  been 
the  Irish  in  me. 

Another  policy  that  I  adopted  was  one  that 
makes  for  success  in  the  business  world.  It 
was:  "Never  tackle  anything  but  champions. 
Nothing  else  is  worth  while."  Experience  con- 
vinces me  that  this  applies  to  all  fields  of  en- 
deavor. It  is  just  as  easy  to  engage  the  in- 
terest of  a  millionaire  as  it  is  to  engage  the 
interest  of  a  shoe  clerk.  You  must  make  your 
scheme  big  enough  to  be  worth  his  while,  that's 
aU. 

Just  a  bit  of  family  history.  My  father 
was  the  founder  of  the  San  Francisco  Monitor. 
He  was  a  pioneer  of  what  might  be  called  the 
English-speaking  Roman  Catholic  Church  in 
California,  and  was  considered  the  best  general 
authority  on  Roman  Catholic  matters  in  the 
United  States.  He  was  a  passionate  advocate 
of  secession  and  during  the  Civil  War  con- 
stantly used  both  tongue  and  pen  to  promote 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN 


^ 


the  cause  of  the  Confederacy.  At  that  time 
mobs  of  lawless  partisans  infested  San  Fran- 
cisco and  riots  were  constantly  breaking  out  in 
all  parts  of  the  city.  And  my  father  was  one 
of  the  principal  inciters  of  them.  Every  issue 
of  his  paper  bore  flaring  articles  in  support 
of  the  South  and  to  most  of  the  people  these 
articles  were  like  red  flags  to  a  bull.  That's 
the  way  my  father  got  the  name,  "Fighting 
Brady." 

On  the  night  of  the  assassination  of  Lincoln 
my  father  committed  an  act  of  supreme  fanat- 
ical folly.  He  got  up  on  a  stand  on  Mont- 
gomery Street  and  made  a  speech  declaring 
that  it  served  Lincoln  right  because  he  had 
gone  to  the  theater  on  Good  Friday  night, 
and  in  so  doing  had  insulted  at  least  one-third 
of  the  population  of  the  United  States — ^the 
Catholics.  The  time  for  such  a  speech  was, 
to  say  the  least,  not  quite  propitious.  A  mob 
sprang  at  my  father,  dragged  him  down  from 
the  stand,  and  would  have  hanged  him,  but 
he  was  rescued  by  General  Macdowell,  who 
Wfusjn!  co.mmand  of  the  federal  troops  in  San 


6  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

Francisco  and  who  chanced  to  be  coming  down 
the  street  at  the  head  of  his  forces  at  the  time. 
Failing  to  hang  my  father,  the  mob  proceeded 
down  Clay  Street,  broke  into  the  offices  of  the 
Monitor^  wrecked  the  plant  and  tried  to  fire 
the  building,  but  were  prevented.  Then  they 
rushed  on  to  the  offices  of  the  Alt  a  Cola,  an- 
other pro-southern  paper,  and  demolished  the 
building. 

My  father  was  made  prisoner  and  sent  to 
Alcatraz,  an  island  in  San  Francisco  Bay, 
where  he  was  kept  for  six  months  until  the 
thing  had  quieted  down.  On  being  freed  from 
prison  he  started  a  suit  against  the  city  of  San 
Francisco  for  its  failure  to  protect  the  prop- 
erty of  the  Monitor^  and  after  three  or  four 
years  of  expensive  litigation  was  awarded  a 
verdict  of  something  like  thirty  thousand  dol- 
lars. 

My  father's  treatment  so  disgusted  him  with 
San  Francisco  that  one  day,  when  I  was  a  boy 
of  three,  he  literally  snatched  me  from  my 
mother's  arms  and  brought  me  to  New  York. 
Here,  through  the  influence  of  United  States 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  7 

Senator  Casserley,  of  California,  he  secured  a 
position  as  head  of  one  of  the  departments  of 
immigration  at  Ellis  Island.  But  he  was  a 
man  of  irregular  habits  and  would  not  stick 
to  any  position,  so  he  soon  threw  up  his  Ellis 
Island  job  and  took  to  space  writing  on  the 
New  York  papers. 

Things  went  from  bad  to  worse  with  us. 
What  money  my  father  could  earn  between  his 
periodical  irregularities  was  barely  enough  to 
keep  body  and  soul  together.  Many  times  I 
used  to  sit,  cold  and  hungry,  in  the  threadbare 
room  we  occupied „down  on  the  East  Side  wait- 
ing for  him  to  come  home,  and  then  cry  myself 
to  sleep.  Then  I  took  to  selling  newspapers 
and  eked  out  just  enough  to  keep  me  from 
starving.  I  don't  remember  ever  having  had 
a  new  suit  of  clothes  in  all  that  time.  Dur- 
ing the  day  I  used  to  go  to  school  and  sit, 
pinched  with  hunger  and  anxiety,  through  the 
tedious  hours.  But  at  least  I  was  warm,  even 
if  the  room  was  stuffy  at  times. 

Even  then  there  seemed  to  be  in  me  a  spirit 
of  domination.    I  used  to  boss  the  small  boys 


8  THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

at  play.  I  made  them  do  my  bidding.  But 
I  used  to  champion  their  cause,  and  many  a 
time  licked  a  bully  twice  my  size  in  defense 
of  some  of  my  youthful  toadies.  As  I  said 
before,  it  must  have  been  this  experience  that 
made  me  realize  the  importance  of  being 
known  as  a  fighter.  The  big  boys  not  only 
let  me  alone,  but  avoided  picking  trouble  with 
anybody  that  had  put  himself  imder  the  pro- 
tection of  my  wing. 

But  one  night  I  went  to  bed  shivering  with 
an  imknown  terror.  I  felt  that  something  had 
happened  to  my  father.  It  was  not  that  the 
hour  was  late,  for  he  was  accustomed  to  stay- 
ing out  until  the  small  hours.  It  was  just 
something  I  can't  describe  took  possession  of 
me.  And  thus  I  lay,  shivering  until  daylight. 
In  the  morning  I  saw  a  paragraph  in  one  of 
the  papers  to  the  effect  that  an  unknown  man 
had  dropped  dead  in  the  street  and  had  been 
taken  to  the  morgue.  The  description  fitted  my 
father  so  closely  that  I  experienced  a  shock. 
I  made  straight  as  an  arrow  for  the  morgue 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  9 

— for  I  knew  that  I  should  find  him  there. 
And  there  I  did  find  him! 

My  father  had  died  and  left  me  without  a 
nickel  in  the  world.  In  a  way  this  was  not  a 
disadvantage,  since  it  threw  me  definitely  upon 
my  own  resources.  Before,  I  had  half  waited 
for  him,  half  depended  on  him.  Now  I  must 
hustle  for  myself. 

The  Press  Club,  of  which  my  father  was  a 
member,  buried  him  in  Cypress  Hill  Cemetery, 
and  then,  as  I  was  quite  a  lad,  gave  me  a  job 
as  day  steward  of  the  club.  But,  as  I  had  ac- 
quired the  restless  habits  of  the  street  nomad, 
life  at  the  club  was  too  restricted  for  me.  I 
didn't  want  to  be  working  for  anybody,  keep- 
ing regular  hours ;  I  wanted  to  be  out  hustling 
for  myself. 

I  don't  remember  how  I  chanced  to  turn  my 
attention  to  the  sporting  life  of  the  city.  It 
must  have  been  intuitive.  There  was  nothing 
much  in  the  air  to  suggest  it.  At  that  time 
the  newspapers  regarded  sporting  news  as 
negligible.    There  was  no  such  thing  as  a  page 


10  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

devoted  to  this  field  in  any  of  the  papers.  Base- 
ball was  practically  nothing — dismissed  with 
a  few  paragraphs.  In  fact,  there  was  no  club 
playing  in  the  city  of  New  York  at  all.  The 
Giants  were  unheard  of,  the  Polo  Grounds  did 
not  exist.  The  New  York  club  was  then 
known  as  the  Mutuals,  but  they  played  in 
Brooklyn.  We  had  to  cross  the  ferry  and  then 
take  an  almost  endless  jaunt  on  a  street-car  out 
to  East  New  York  to  see  a  baseball  game. 
But  we  used  to  take  the  jaunt,  all  right,  for 
that  was  the  time  of  Bobby  Matthews,  the 
great  underhand  pitcher,  and  he  was  begin- 
ning to  make  the  world  sit  up  and  take  notice. 
Neither  did  horse-racing  amount  to  much 
at  that  time.  In  fact,  the  biggest  sport  known 
was  the  six-day  walking  matches  at  the  Madi- 
son Square  Garden,  once  or  twice  a  year.  This 
was  the  day  of  Dan  OXeary,  who  was  called 
*'the  heel  and  toe  man,"  and  of  Weston  and 
Charles  Howell.  O'Leary  walked  with  a 
stride,  chin  up,  and  made  a  record  of  Hve  hun- 
dred miles  in  six  days.  He  had  beaten  Weston 
and  was  away  up  in  the  air  about  it,  when  sud- 


THE   FIGHTING  MAN  11 

denly  from  London  came  news  of  a  new  won- 
der— Charles  Howell.  Howell  was  the  man 
who  introduced  the  dog  trot  in  New  York  for 
the  first  time. 

A  match  was  arranged  between  O'Leary, 
Rowell,  John  Ennis  and  a  man  named  Har- 
riman,  who  was  also  a  fine  heel  and  toe  walker. 
On  the  opening  night  there  was  probably  the 
biggest  crowd  of  people  ever  got  together  at 
the  Madison  Square  Garden  for  a  sporting 
event.  It  was  the  time  of  the  Orange  upris- 
ings; the  Hibernians  and  other  Irish  societies 
were  in  full  blast;  anti-English  feeling  ran 
high,  and  so  all  the  Irishmen  of  the  town 
turned  out  to  see  Dan  walk  rings  around  the 
little  Cockney  from  the  hated  isle. 

At  twelve  o'clock  the  match  started. 
O'Leary  pulled  out  with  his  head  in  the  air 
and  chin  up.  And  in  behind  him  fell  Rowell 
with  his  dog  trot.  The  Irishman  discovered 
what  the  Cockney  was  about  and  put  on  more 
speed.  But  the  faster  he  walked,  the  faster 
Rowell  trotted.  In  about  twenty-four  hours 
O'Leary  walked  himself  silly,  but  Rowell  kept 


12  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

right  on  till  the  end  and  won,  making  some- 
thing like  five  hundred  and  eighteen  miles. 

At  that  time  there  were  no  telephones,  and 
as  telegraphing  was  too  expensive,  I  estab- 
lished a  messenger  service  between  the  Garden 
and  the  newspapers  on  Park  Row.  I  got  a 
number  of  boys  from  my  neighborhood  to  do 
the  running  and  paid  them  in  free  passes  to 
the  show.  At  the  end  of  each  hour  I  sent  a 
batch  of  scores  to  the  papers  by  these  fleet- 
footed  messengers  and  received  twenty  cents 
per  score  from  each  paper.  Thus  I  cleaned  up 
about  two  hundred  dollars  a  week  every  time 
there  was  a  big  event. 

Although  young  and  comparatively  inexpe- 
rienced, I  was  much  impressed  with  the  crude- 
ness  of  the  methods  then  in  vogue  of  reporting 
sporting  events.  At  that  time  amateur  ath- 
letes used  to  draw  a  lot  of  money.  Sprinters, 
jumpers  and  five-mile  runners  were  in  great 
vogue.  It  is  too  bad  the  American  love  of 
sport  does  not  include  these  things  to-day.  If 
it  did,  it  would  serve  to  encourage  and  build  up 
more  great  athletes.    We  go  to  see  baseball. 


THE    fighting:   man  18 

prize-fighting  and  horse-racing,  but  not  to 
those  vastly  superior  sports.  I  would  rather 
go  to  see  a  five-mile  run  with  fifty  starters  than 
any  other  sport  in  the  world. 

Somehow  I  felt  intuitively  that  the  day 
would  come  when  love  for  sport  would  broaden, 
that  the  newspapers  would  realize  this  and  take 
it  up  and  push  it  along,  and  my  business  in- 
stinct suggested  that  there  would  be  a  consid- 
erable demand  for  expert  information.  TJie 
Press  Club  used  to  get  exchanges  from  all  over 
the  country,  and  I  started  in  compiling  from 
these  a  scrap-book  of  sporting  records  of  all 
kinds.  I  continued  this  work  during  my  stay 
in  the  club,  about  two  years. 

As  I  had  predicted,  the  sporting  spirit  of 
the  public  began  to  broaden.  The  newspapers 
showed  signs  of  sitting  up  and  taking  notice, 
and  the  records  I  had  compiled  came  more  and 
more  into  service.  I  got  to  be  known  on  Park 
Row  as  an  authority  on  all  sports,  and  made 
much  extra  money  reporting  events  in  this 
field. 

But  presently  I  was  seized  with  a  kind  of 


14.  THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

craving  to  get  back  to  California.  It  must 
have  been  just  the  nomadic  spirit  of  the  boy 
that  swept  over  me  and  carried  me  off  my  feet, 
for  I  was  giving  up  a  sure  thing  in  New  York 
and  saw  no  definite  opportunities  on  the  coast. 
I  was  without  means,  for,  although  I  had  made 
considerable  money,  I  had  saved  none.  But 
to  the  boy  who  had  seen  life  in  the  streets  of 
New  York  as  I  had  seen  it,  the  prospect  of 
beating  my  way  on  the  railroads  by  blind  bag- 
gage or  brake  beam  had  no  terrors.  I  traveled 
as  far  as  Omaha  on  an  empty  stomach.  This 
was  literally  true,  as  I  had  ridden  face  down 
imder  a  car  about  all  the  way.  At  Omaha, 
through  some  local  influence,  I  got  a  job  as 
a  peanut  butcher  on  an  emigrant  train.  By 
"emigrants"  I  don't  mean  foreigners  exactly, 
but  the  poorer  class  of  people  who  were  going 
west  that  way. 

The  emigrant  cars  were  usually  hauled  at 
the  rear  end  of  freight  trains  and  made  mighty 
slow  progress.  In  those  days  a  "peanut  butch- 
er" on  such  a  train  was  literally  a  hotel  on 
wheels — a  kind  of  general  outfitter.    I  used  to 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN  15 

carry  as  part  of  my  stock  canned  beef,  canned 
vegetables,  jellies  and  mattresses.  I  was  run- 
ning between  Omaha  and  Red  Wing,  Ne- 
braska— a  rather  lonesome  trip — and  as  I  had 
always  loved  cards  and  was  more  or  less  clever 
with  them,  as  many  New  York  boys  of  the 
street  are  wont  to  be,  I  was  always  on  the  look- 
out for  a  little  game.  This  I  did  more  for  the 
pastime  of  it  than  for  the  purpose  of  enrich- 
ing myself  at  the  expense  of  my  humble  fel- 
low traveler.  About  the  third  trip  out,  I  got 
into  a  game  of  poker  with  one  of  those  "unso- 
phisticated" emigrants  and  lost  my  entire  stock 
— mattresses,  canned  vegetables,  jellies  and 
all!  When  I  got  back  to  Omaha  minus  my 
"hotel"  I  was  summarily  fired. 

Next  I  carried  newspapers  for  the  Omaha 
Republican  for  fifty  cents  a  week.  I  used  to 
get  up  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  and  work 
a  couple  of  hours  each  day.  I  had  learned 
among  other  things  in  New  York  to  play  bil- 
liards, and  I  now  applied  my  art  in  this  direc- 
tion to  supplementing  my  income  as  a  news- 
paper carrier.     Three  months  of  that  sort  of 


16  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

thing  was  enough  for  me.  I  wrote  to  the  Press 
Club  of  New  York,  and  they  sent  me  a  pass  to 
San  Francisco. 

Then  I  got  a  job  as  news  agent  on  trains 
between  San  Francisco  and  such  points  as  Sac- 
ramento, Ogden,  Deming,  Los  Angeles  and 
Santa  Cruz.  I  worked  at  this  for  about  two 
years  and  a  half.  But  the  theater  was  in  my 
blood;  I  was  stage-struck  all  the  time;  every 
purpose,  every  thought  pointed  to  the  theater. 
San  Francisco  at  that  time  was  filled  with 
amateur  dramatic  societies.  One  of  these  used 
to  give  monthly  performances  at  Piatt's  Hall 
on  Montgomery  Street,  and  was  headed  by  A. 
M.  Lawrence  as  principal  actor,  who  up  to  a 
short  time  ago,  was  William  R.  Hearst's  right- 
hand  man,  and  the  managing  editor  of  the 
Hearst  newspapers  in  Chicago.  Lawrence's 
brother,  Fred,  and  Thomas  A.  Wise,  who  re- 
cently made  a  wonderful  hit  as  Falstaff  in 
New  York  City,  were  also  in  the  company. 
I  gave  my  first  performance  with  this  com- 
pany, playing  the  signal  man  in  Under  the 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  17 

Gas  Lights  and  the  Indian  in  The  Octoroon — 
and  if  I  do  say  it  myself,  I  was  very  good. 

About  that  time  Bartley  Campbell  came  on 
from  New  York  to  produce  The  White  Slave 
and  other  plays.  He  brought  with  him 
Georgia  Cavyan,  Augustus  Levick,  George 
Wessels,  Max  Freeman  and  Louis  Sylvester, 
all  of  whom  were  high-priced  eastern  stage 
folk.  Campbell's  plan  was  to  fill  the  small 
parts  during  this  engagement  with  what  was 
known  as  "Pacific  Coast  Actors." 

That  period  was  notable  for  its  talent  in  em- 
bryo that  lurked  undiscovered  in  San  Fran- 
cisco. David  Belasco  was  a  poorly  paid  stage 
manager  at  the  Baldwin  Theater  imder 
Thomas  Maguire;  Joseph  R.  Grismer  was 
leading  man  at  the  Baldwin,  and  Henry  Mil- 
ler was  playing  in  stock.  Al  Hayman,  cre- 
ator of  the  theatrical  syndicate,  was  working 
in  the  box  ofiice  of  the  Bush  Street  Theater. 
The  real  theatrical  magnate  of  California  was 
Frederick  W.  Burt.  Practically  unknown 
men  from  the  East  drifted  into  town  occa- 


18  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

sionally.  Dan  Frohman  came  out  there  as 
manager  of  Callendar's  minstrels — all  negroes 
— and  his  brother  Charles  Frohman  was  agent 
for  the  company  and  doubled  in  brass. 

An  eastern  company  playing  San  Francisco 
was  a  novelty  I  Occasionally  the  Union  Square 
Stock  of  New  York  or  some  other  specially 
organized  company  would  come  there  and  play 
for  six  or  eight  weeks,  presenting  a  series  of 
eastern  successes.  But  such  companies  did  not 
tour  the  coast.  Unless  they  were  willing  to 
"barnstorm"  there  was  no  place  for  them  to 
go.  Los  Angeles  was  a  village;  San  Diego 
was  a  little  bit  of  a  town,  and  Seattle  had  one 
main  street  and  no  theater.  We  used  to  play 
in  the  school  hall  there  and  in  Portland  we 
used  the  first  floor  of  a  market  building. 
There  were  no  railroad  connections  between 
California  and  Oregon,  and  when  the  travel- 
ing companies  did  not  take  the  coast  steamer 
they  used  to  go  over  the  mountains  by  wagon. 

I  saw  Campbell,  reminded  him  that  I  had 
met  him  in  the  Press  Club  of  New  York,  of 
which  he  was  a  member,  told  him  that  I  was  a 


COPYRIGHT,   BROWN   BROS. 


Georgia  Cavyan  and  Henry  Miller 


David  Belasco 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  19 

full-fledged  actor  and  asked  him  for  a  job. 
He  took  an  immediate  interest  in  me  and  cast 
me  for  one  of  the  best  parts  that  were  to  be 
distributed  among  the  California  actors  in  The 
White  Slave.  At  rehearsal,  when  my  cue 
came,  I  walked  on  the  stage  and  spoke  my 
lines  with  the  nerve  of  an  old-timer.  There 
was  a  commotion  in  the  wings  and  I  flattered 
myself  that  the  stage  folk  had  been  greatly 
impressed  with  my  work.  But  it  was  not  that 
that  caused  the  excitement.  The  California 
actors  had  recognized  in  me  the  peanut  butcher 
whom  they  had  met  on  the  trains,  and  there 
was  great  professional  agitation  and  murmur- 
ing. The  thing  was  preposterous.  Mr.  Camp- 
bell was  called  to  the  side  of  the  stage  and 
after  a  few  moments  walked  up  to  me,  took 
the  part  out  of  my  hand,  and  said,  "My  dear 
boy,  you  are  not  an  actor.  I  am  sorry,  but  I 
must  have  somebody  of  experience  to  do  this. 
If  you  will  wait  until  rehearsal  is  over,  I  will 
see  what  I  can  do  for  you." 

I  spent  the  rest  of  the  afternoon  crying  in 
the  wings. 


20  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

When  rehearsal  was  over  I  tackled  Mr. 
CampbeU  at  the  stage  door.  "Come  to  Mr. 
Burt's  office,"  said  he,  "and  I'll  see  what  I  can 
do  for  you." 

This  cheered  me  greatly,  since  I  felt  that 
an  all-powerful  man  like  Biu-t  could  do  big 
things  for  me.  The  magnate  was  very  good- 
natured.  "Mr.  Campbell  has  told  me  your 
story,  young  man,"  said  he.  "I'm  going  to 
make  you  call  boy  of  the  company  at  ten  dol- 
lars a  week." 

I  never  forgot  Burt's  kindness.  Later  on, 
when  the  tide  turned  against  him  on  the  coast, 
he  became  my  right-hand  man  in  New  York, 
handling  all  my  finances.  He  remained  with 
me  up  until  a  few  years  ago,  when  he  fell  sud- 
denly on  the  street  one  day  and  died  in  my 
arms. 

I  was  nominally  call  boy,  but  was  in  reality 
assistant  stage  manager,  since  Mr.  Freeman 
almost  immediately  relegated  all  his  duties  to 
me.  I  even  prompted  and  rang  the  curtain 
up  and  down — and  all  within  ten  days.    The 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  21 

piece  had  been  running  about  two  weeks  when 
Max  Freeman  was  taken  sick.  Mr.  Freeman 
was  playing  the  gambler,  "Natchez  Jim." 
There  was  nobody  to  take  his  place,  and  as 
the  company  was  doing  an  enormous  business, 
the  news  of  his  illness  caused  great  consterna- 
tion back  on  the  stage.  It  was  a  quarter  to 
eight  and  all  the  available  men  around  had 
been  tried  and  found  wanting.  In  spite  of 
the  shock  I  had  felt  at  having  the  part  taken 
from  me  so  summarily  before,  I  still  had  nerve 
enough  left  to  try  for  "Natchez  Jim."  I 
waited  until  the  whole  bunch  of  aspirants  had 
been  disposed  of  and  then  plucked  Mr.  Camp- 
bell by  the  sleeve  and  said,  "Give  me  a  chance 
at  it,  will  you?" 

He  looked  at  me  for  a  moment,  puzzled  at 
what  he  must  have  thought  my  supreme  ef- 
frontery, but  he  was  desperate.  "For  God's 
sake,  let  him  try  it !"  he  exclaimed. 

I  knew  every  line  of  the  piece  and  so,  with 
author,  director  and  actors  looking  on  to  see 
what  I  could  do,  I  strode  on  the  stage  and 


22  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

spoke  the  first  line  of  the  part  with  so  much 
ginger  that  my  voice  aknost  shook  the  build- 
ing. 

"Go  down  and  make  up,"  was  Campbell's 
verdict. 

I  rushed  down-stairs  to  the  room  of  William 
*H.  Thompson,  who,  by  the  way,  is  the  best 
character  actor  in  America  and  always  has 
been,  and  he  made  me  up.  I  wore  a  long  black 
wig,  a  black  mustache  and  goatee  and  heavy 
black  eyebrows.  Freeman's  coat  did  not  fit 
me,  so  they  had  to  reef  it  in  behind  with  safety 
pins,  which  they  did  very  skilfully ;  and  I  went 
on,  made  up  as  the  desperate  Mississippi  gam- 
bler who  ran  the  whole  act.  I  was  then  less 
than  nineteen  years  old.  The  first  word  of 
encouragement  I  received  when  the  curtain  fell 
on  the  act  was  from  Georgia  Cavyan,  who 
slapped  me  on  the  back  and  told  me  I  was  fine. 
I  never  forgot  it. 

And  now  Mr.  Freeman,  who  was  rehearsing 
Siberia  for  its  first  production  on  any  stage, 
claimed  that  he  had  too  much  work  to  do  and 
that  I  was  good  enough  to  continue  in  The 


William  H,  Thompson 


i 

H 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  23 

White  Slave,  so  they  let  me  play  the  part 
through  the  rest  of  the  engagement. 

Years  afterward  I  had  a  chance  to  repay 
Freeman  for  his  kindness  to  me.  He  played 
with  my  wife  in  London  and  he  played  with 
her  in  New  York,  and  whenever  he  was  out 
of  a  job  I  tried  to  help  him.  I  met  him  on 
Broadway  only  about  twenty-four  hours  be- 
fore he  committed  suicide.  He  was  too  proud 
to  tell  me  he  was  in  such  a  bad  way.  I  slipped 
him  a  Sve-doUar  bill,  and  I  am  afraid  with 
that  he  got  the  rest  of  the  liquor  that  gave 
him  the  nerve  to  do  what  he  did.  It  is 
one  of  the  great  regrets  of  my  life  that  I  did 
not  know  then  how  desperate  his  condition  was. 
I  might  have  saved  him  I 

I  remained  at  the  California  theater  through 
the  Campbell  engagement,  during  which  we 
produced  several  plays.  These  Burt  had  ar- 
ranged to  have  reproduced  on  tour  on  the  coast 
by  the  Burt  Dramatic  Company,  which  was 
headed  by  Joseph  R.  Grismer  and  Phoebe  Da- 
vis. I  was  sent  on  to  Sacramento  to  stage 
the  plays  for  the  touring  company,  and  there 


24  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

for  the  first  time  met  Grismer,  who  afterward 
became  my  partner,  and  who,  in  fact,  is  inter- 
ested with  me  to  this  day  in  several  plays,  the 
principal  of  which.  Way  Down  East,  made  us 
over  one  million  dollars  in  nineteen  years. 
Phoebe  Davis,  now  dead,  played  "Anna"  in 
this  piece  for  most  of  that  time.  So  great  has 
been  the  drawing  power  of  Way  Down  East, 
so  midiminished,  that  I  am  constantly  refusing 
offers  amounting  to  thousands  of  dollars  a 
month  for  the  privilege  of  putting  this  piece 
on  in  stock. 

As  Grismer  was  on  the  point  of  leaving 
Burt  and  starting  the  Grismer-Davis  Com- 
pany, he  took  me  over  at  twenty  dollars  a  week 
to  be  his  stage  manager  and  play  the  comedy 
parts.  I  toured  with  this  company  about  three 
years,  during  which  time  I  received  the  most 
valuable  experience  of  my  life.  We  played 
about  everything.  One  night  I  would  be  the 
newsboy  in  Under  the  Gas  Light,  and  the 
next  the  king  or  the  first  grave-digger  in 
Hamlet.  Then  I  would  play  "Puffy"  in  The 
Streets  of  New  York,  and  again,  "Danglers" 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  25 

in  Monte  Crista,  And  so  it  went — constant 
change,  constant  study,  new  experiences.  Our 
repertoire  was  at  least  a  hundred  plays  long. 
Each  of  us  used  to  carry  his  costumes  and 
make-up  for  ten  or  fifteen  plays  in  one  little 
trunk.  We  played  mining  camps,  discovered 
new  territory,  and  in  fact  were  one  of  the  first 
dramatic  companies  to  play  Montana.  The 
great  boom  of  the  Northwest  had  not  begun. 
Butte  was  only  a  little  bit  of  a  place,  and  Spo- 
kane was  nothing  at  all.  There  was  not  a 
decent  hotel  in  the  whole  section.  Salt  Lake 
City  was  a  veritable  metropolis.  This  town 
was  as  far  east  as  any  of  the  Pacific  Coast 
companies  had  ever  dared  go.  I  felt  as  if  I 
were  in  London  when  I  trod  the  boards  of  the 
Salt  Lake  theater. 

The  Mormon  Church  owned  the  playhouse 
and  we  had  to  pay  a  tithing  for  the  privilege 
of  performing  there.  Brigham  Young  was  a 
great  lover  of  the  theater.  He  used  to  bring 
all  of  his  numerous  families  with  him  to  the 
play  and  take  all  the  boxes  he  wanted.  Some- 
times there  would  be  four  boxes  filled  with  his 


26  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

oiFspring.  Also,  he  used  to  love  to  go  back 
stage  and  talk  to  the  actors,  and  we  came  to  re- 
gard him  as  a  broad-minded  man  of  great  abil- 
ity. 

For  that  matter,  all  of  the  Mormons  are 
crazy  about  the  theater.  They  seem  to  be  pe- 
culiarly gifted  in  a  dramatic  way.  I  have 
never  seen  so  large  a  percentage  of  really  tal- 
ented amateur  players  in  any  other  community. 
They  had  a  dramatic  company  which  used  to 
give  three  or  four  performances  a  year  in  the 
Salt  Lake  theater  and  did  splendid  work — •■ 
work  worthy  of  any  professional  company. 
These  performances  were  social  events  and  got 
the  support  of  the  Mormon  Church.  A  young 
man  named  Wells,  who  afterward  became  gov- 
ernor of  Utah,  was  one  of  the  best  leading  ama- 
teur actors  I've  ever  seen. 

Annie  Adams,  who  came  from  the  Mormon 
coimtry,  was  a  member  of  our  company  one 
year,  playing  in  The  Shadows  of  a  Great  City. 
She  used  to  have  her  little  girl  along  with  her. 
This  little  girl  used  to  sing  pretty  songs  and 
pick  the  banjo,  and  played  the  part  of  "Pea- 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  27 

nuts"  in  Under  the  Gas  Light  For  her  serv- 
ices while  traveling  around  with  our  Pacific 
Coast  Company  I  paid  her  eight  dollars  a 
week.  Afterward,  when  I  produced  She  at  the 
Alcazar  Theater  in  San  Francisco,  she  was  one 
of  my  ballet  of  six  that  danced  in  the  cave 
scene.  To  be  brief,  this  selfsame  little  girl 
is  known  now  as  Maude  Adams,  probably  the 
greatest  of  American  favorites. 

During  "off  time"  when  the  Grismer  Com- 
pany was  not  playing,  I  got  a  lot  of  experi- 
ence with  one  of  the  greatest  actors  I  ever 
knew,  Mr.  William  E.  Sheridan.  Sheridan 
was  little  known  in  the  East,  but  was  a  great 
favorite  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  His  perform- 
ance of  "Louis  XI,"  "Shylock,"  "RicheKeu," 
"King  Lear"  and  "King  John"  compared  fa- 
vorably with  those  of  Irving,  Booth  or  any 
other  of  the  great  actors  of  my  time.  Later 
I  played  small  Shakespearean  parts  with 
Booth,  Rossi,  Salvini  and  Madame  EUemerich, 
a  great  German  actress  who  came  to  San  Fran- 
cisco and  played  in  English  for  the  first  time, 
but  later,  disappointed  with  her  reception  there. 


28  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

returned  to  Germany.  These  artists  all  played 
with  California  stock  companies. 

I  had  the  low  comedy  instinct,  and  when  I 
played  with  the  great  stars  I  have  mentioned 
my  experience  was  largely  confined  to  such 
parts  as  the  first  grave  digger  in  Hamlet , 
"Roderigues"  in  Othello,  "Gobbo"  in  The 
Merchant  of  Venice,  the  fool  in  King  Lear, 
"Touchstone"  in  As  You  Like  It,  the  Lord 
Mayor  in  Richard  III  and  "Peter"  in  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  That  was  my  line  and  I  was  con- 
sidered one  of  the  best  in  the  field. 

What  I  learned  about  Shakespeare  from  this 
experience  has  stood  me  in  good  stead.  For 
one  thing,  it  has  enabled  me  to  advance  and 
assist  Robert  Mantell  in  his  Shakespearean 
productions,  from  which  I  receive  from  twen- 
ty-five thousand  dollars  to  thirty  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year  as  my  share  of  the  profits. 

With  the  phenomenal  rise  of  motion  pic- 
lures,  most  of  the  cities  throughout  the  United 
States,  barring  New  York,  Chicago,  Philadel- 
phia and  Boston,  became  very  unprofitable  for 
traveling  attractions,  and  Mantell,  after  suf- 


THE   FIGHTING  MAN  29 

fering  one  very  bad  season,  was  tempted  by  a 
very  big  offer  to  enter  this  new  field  of  enter- 
tainment. He  made  the  temporary  change  on 
my  advice,  as  I  felt  that  the  amount  of  money 
offered  him  by  the  motion-picture  company 
was  not  to  be  sneezed  at,  and  that  he  should 
avail  himself  of  the  opportunity  to  lay  aside  a 
nest  egg  for  his  later  years.  Fortunately,  the 
producers  of  Mr.  MantelFs  motion  pictures  did 
not  call  upon  him  to  play  Shakespeare.  So  he 
devoted  himself  to  thrilling  melodrama  and  did 
not  appear  in  any  of  his  great  characters  on  the 
screen. 

Mr.  E.  S.  Sothern,  after  playing  his  fare- 
well performances  in  If  I  Were  King,  at  the 
Shubert  Theater,  and  having  devoted  some- 
thing like  forty  thousand  dollars  to  diJBFerent 
charities,  including  the  Actors'  Fund,  also 
went  into  motion  pictures  and  really  made  his 
farewell  performances  before  the  public  on  the 
screen. 

The  retirement  of  Sothern  and  Marlowe 
from  the  theater  was  a  great  loss.  They  both 
left  the  stage  in  the  heyday  of  their  success. 


80  THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

In  fact,  I  understand  that  Mr.  Sothem's  rea- 
son for  retiring  at  so  early  a  period  in  his 
career  was  that  he  wanted  to  be  remembered 
at  his  best.  Sothern  was  never  a  great 
Shakespearean  actor;  probably  his  finest  per- 
formance was  Hamlet,  He  was  a  fine  light 
comedian,  but  not  robust  enough  to  play 
Shakespeare.  Marlowe  was  unquestionably  the 
finest  actress  of  legitimate  roles  of  her  time, 
and,  as  I  said  before,  her  retirement  was  a  dis- 
tinct loss  to  the  theater. 

I  don't  agree  with  the  popular  notion  that 
Shakespeare  spells  ruin.  Edwin  Booth  died 
rich  and  so  did  Lawrence  Barrett  and  Salvini. 
Mansfield  would  have  died  rich  if  it  had  not 
been  for  his  artistic  tastes  which  prompted  an 
extravagant  outlay  for  scenery  and  costumes. 
Booth  and  Barrett  in  their  famous  tour  to- 
gether cleaned  up  over  six  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars  in  one  season  of  about  forty 
weeks,  and  Mansfield  in  the  later  years  of  his 
life  made  easily  two  hundred  thousand  dollars 
a  year. 

As  long  as  the  American  stage  exists  Shake- 


Maude  Adams 


Annie  Adams 
(Mother  of  Maude) 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  31 

speare  is  bound  to  be  played  profitably  by  at 
least  one  or  two  persons,  a  man  and  a  woman. 
Sothern  and  Marlowe  are  now  clearing  up  one 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  a  season 
from  these  classic  plays.  In  the  course  of  time 
some  one  will  be  called  on  to  take  the  place 
of  Sothern  and  Marlowe  and  Mantell,  and  I 
know  of  no  one  who  is  being  prepared  to 
do  it.  You  ask  the  average  actor  to  play 
Shakespeare  and  he  looks  at  you  contemptu- 
ously and  says,  "What  do  I  want  to  play  that 
old  stuff  for?" 

Not  long  ago  I  offered  a  prominent  actor 
* — an  old  man —  who  commands  about  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  dollars  a  week,  two  hundred 
dollars  a  week  to  go  out  with  Mantell  and 
play  such  old  men's  parts  as  "Polonius,"  "An- 
tonio" and  "Kent"  in  King  Lear.  He  replied 
that  he  would  rather  play  modern  parts  at  fifty 
dollars  a  week  than  Shakespeare  at  two  hun- 
dred dollars.  This  attitude  of  the  American 
actor  I  can  not  understand. 

Let  the  young  actor  take  this  tip  from  one 
who  has  studied  Shakespeare,  played  it  and 


82  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

for  many  years  observed  it  both  from  an  ar- 
tistic and  a  business  standpoint:  study  Shake- 
speare, get  an  apprenticeship  in  a  Shakespear- 
ean company,  go  at  it  seriously  and  play  it  as 
often  as  you  can. 

Finally  I  broke  away  from  Grismer  and  ac- 
cepted an  engagement  with  M.  B.  Curtis,  who 
years  later  shot  a  policeman  in  San  Francisco 
and  got  into  serious  trouble.  We  went  east 
playing  Samuel  of  Posen  for  part  of  a  season, 
then  I  left  Curtis  and  went  with  Louis  Mor- 
rison and  a  woman  named  Celia  Alsberg,  who 
were  touring  the  East  in  Cymbeline  and 
Measure  for  Measure, 

But  Shakespeare  wrote  his  failures  as  well 
as  his  successes  and  Cymbeline  and  Measure 
for  Measure  may  be  classed  as  two  of  the  for- 
mer, as  far  as  the  box  office  is  concerned.  The 
result  was  that  the  Morrison  Company  got  into 
financial  straits  and  came  near  going  to  pieces. 
Then  I  proposed  to  Morrison  that  he  make  a 
production  of  Faust,  which  Henry  Irving  had 
just  done  successfully  in  England.  I  had  got 
hold  of  one  of  Irving's  souvenir  books  and  had 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN  33 

also  a  printed  copy  of  Faust j  written  by  Bailey 
Bernard.  This  play  had  never  been  presented 
in  America  with  the  Brocken  scene — a  moun- 
tain scene  full  of  witches,  devils  and  the  like. 
I  persuaded  Morrison  that  it  would  be  a  great 
scheme  for  him  to  do  "Mephistopheles"  and 
have  this  Brocken  feature  in  the  play. 

Morrison  secured  booking  for  Faust  at  the 
Columbia  Theater,  Chicago — ^we  were  then 
somewhere  in  West  Virginia — and  I  was  sent 
on  there  a  month  in  advance  to  produce  the 
play.  I  think  I  had  about  four  hundred  dol- 
lars saved  up  at  that  time,  and  I  was  given 
full  swing.  When  I  got  to  Chicago  I  started 
in  to  prepare  the  thing  on  what  was  then  a 
big  scale.  Morrison  failed  to  send  me  money 
as  he  had  promised,  but  such  was  my  con- 
fidence in  the  piece  that  I  did  not  hesitate 
to  spend  the  entire  four  hundred  dollars  of 
my  own  money  to  push  the  production  along. 
I  finally  succeeded  in  getting  Faust  on  with 
the  [Brocken  scene  in  it.  But  the  piece  failed 
and  we  again  found  ourselves  facing  dis- 
solution.   At  an  opportune  moment,  however, 


84  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

we  got  a  guarantee  to  go  over  and  play  a 
few  weeks  at  a  North  Side  theater  which  was 
in  bad  shape,  and  in  doing  this  made  enough 
money  to  buy  tickets  for  part  of  the  journey 
to  California. 

In  due  time  we  started  for  the  coast  with 
Faust  The  way  was  rough  and  the  road  was 
hard  and  it  was  a  case  of  "bust  at  any  min- 
ute." We  got  no  farther  than  Denver  at  the 
first  jump.  But  I  persuaded  Morrison  to  pro- 
duce Under  the  Gas  Light  in  that  city  Christ- 
mas night  and  we  got  one  thousand  seven  hun- 
dred dollars  in  the  house,  which  saved  our  lives 
and  paid  the  balance  of  our  fares  to  San  Fran- 
cisco. In  San  Francisco  Morrison  raised  some 
money  and  we  produced  Faust  at  the  Baldwin 
Theater  on  a  really  elaborate  scale,  with  Henry 
Miller  in  the  title  part.  The  piece  was  an  enor- 
mous success. 

I  fancy  this  change  of  fortune  swelled  Mor- 
rison's head,  for  I  began  to  observe  that  he 
was  inclined  to  take  more  credit  for  the  piece 
than  I  thought  he  was  entitled  to,  particularly 
as  he  had  not  paid  me  back  my  four  hundred 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  35 

dollars,  and  I  had  a  line  on  the  program  stat- 
ing that  the  piece  was  produced  under  my  per- 
sonal supervision.  I  shall  never  forget  that 
line  on  the  program:  "Produced  under  the 
personal  supervision,  etc."  I  had  never  en- 
joyed anything  of  the  kind  before.  .  I  used  to 
keep  a  program  in  my  pocket  and  take  it  out 
surreptitiously  and  read  those  fascinating 
words  over  and  over  again.  I  confess  that  it 
swelled  my  head  a  little,  too ! 

But  the  line  on  the  program  presently  ceased 
to  satisfy  my  ambition.  I  began  to  think  1 
was  entitled  to  something  more.  Always  at 
the  end  of  the  Brocken  scene  there  had  been  an 
ovation  wherever  we  played  it,  and  Morrison 
had  always  taken  the  curtain  calls  alone.  I 
anticipated  that  he  would  continue  to  do  this, 
and  when  we  opened  in  San  Francisco  I  had 
packed  the  gallery  with  my  friends.  I  had 
many  friends  in  that  city,  and  they  were  all 
tough,  too.  So  every  time  Morrison  came  in 
front  of  the  curtain  there  were  shouts  and  calls 
for  "Brady!"— "Brady!"— and  he  was  forced 
to  bring  me  out  or  the  gang  would  never  have 


86  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

allowed  the  play  to  proceed.  I  was  getting 
forty  dollars  a  week  when  this  demonstration 
in  my  behalf  occurred,  and  the  next  day  I  told 
Mr.  Morrison  I'd  have  to  have  seventy-five  dol- 
lars or  I'd  quit.  He  said,  "Quit!"  which  was 
something  of  a  shock  to  my  vanity.  But  I 
-guess  he  was  anxious  to  get  rid  of  me,  and  if 
so  I  played  right  into  his  hand.  Instead  of 
getting  promotion  I  had,  by  getting  the  boys 
to  shout  for  me,  brought  about  my  own  defeat. 
At  any  rate,  Morrison  and  I  parted  company. 
He  went  on  playing  Faust  up  to  the  day 
of  his  death  ten  years  later  and  made  many, 
many  fortunes  out  of  it! 


II 


Having  got  a  name  by  this  time,  I  imme- 
diately went  off  on  my  own  hook  and  signed 
a  contract  to  play  a  starring  engagement  at 
a  ten-cent  theater  on  Mission  Street,  which  is 
now  known  as  Morosco's.  It  was  a  place  where 
they  starred  Pacific  Coast  favorites.  I  was  to 
supply  the  piece  and  play  the  leading  part 
and  to  receive  ten  per  cent,  of  the  gross  re- 
ceipts. The  engagement  was  for  two  weeks. 
I  opened  in  The  Lights  of  London,  playing 
"Seth  Prene."  I  never  shall  forget  how  I  felt 
when  I  saw  my  name  in  big  blue  letters  over 
the  door:  "William  A.  Brady  in  Lights  of 
London."  I  used  to  stand  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  street  for  hours  and  regard  it  with 
vast  admiration  and  content.  Really,  I  had 
arrived ! 

I  was  an  enormous  success  there  and  my  en- 
37 


88  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

gagement  was  extended  from  two  weeks  to 
twelve.  When  I  quit  I  was  two  thousand  seven 
hundred  dollars  ahead  of  the  game.  As  I  had 
no  faith  in  banks,  I  used  to  carry  this  money 
with  me  in  a  little  black  bag  slung  over  my 
shoulder  like  a  bookmaker  at  the  derby.  I 
was  a  rolling  stone.  I  slept  wherever  night 
overtook  me.  For  eighteen  months  I  carried 
this  money  in  the  little  black  bag  through  Ari- 
zona, Texas,  Arkansas,  Montana,  Wyoming, 
down  dark  streets,  in  dangerous  places  like 
Tucson,  Arizona — always  with  a  six-shooter  in 
my  back  pocket.  But  after  a  while  my  money 
got  to  be  so  bulky  that  I  used  to  go  and  buy 
cashier's  checks  from  different  banks,  payable 
to  myself.  It  was  wonderful  the  assortment 
of  paper  I  acquired  in  this  way.  When  I  fin- 
ally reached  New  York  and  was  about  to  pro- 
duce After  Darkj  I  went  to  the  Bank  of  the 
Metropolis  and  brought  out  this  bunch  of 
checks  and  certificates  of  deposit  from  almost 
every  section  of  the  United  States.  The  re- 
ceiving teller  looked  at  me  in  amazement. 
"Anything  the  matter  with  them?"  I  asked. 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  39 

"They're  as  good  as  gold — every  one,"  said 
he. 

Thus  I  started  my  first  bank  account  with 
something  like  thirteen  thousand  five  hundred 
dollars. 

At  the  end  of  the  Morosco  engagement  I 
joined  a  young  actor  named  Webster  and  we 
formed  the  Webster-Brady  Company  and 
toured  the  Pacific  Coast  in  the  same  manner 
as  Grismer  had  done  with  his  company.  By 
this  time  Grismer  had  extended  his  trips  to 
Denver  and  Texas,  leaving  his  valuable  Pa- 
cific Coast  routes  open,  and  I  jumped  in  and 
got  his  business.  I  started  out  with  a  reper- 
toire consisting  of  Lights  of  London^  The 
Pavements  of  PariSj  Lynwood,  Monte  Cristo^ 
Hazel  Kirke,  After  Dark  and  one  or  two  other 
pieces.  We  were  successful  right  from  the 
jump. 

At  that  time  Rider  Haggard's  novel,  Shej 
had  got  tremendous  vogue  throughout  the 
country  and  was  for  sale  in  all  the  big  stores 
and  railroad  stations.  Everybody  was  reading 
it.     So  it  occurred  to  me  to  dramatize  this 


40  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

novel,  and  I  did  so  one  afternoon  in  Reno  with 
the  aid  of  a  bottle  of  mucilage  and  four  or 
five  copies  of  the  book.  We  produced  She  at 
Hazard's  Pavilion  in  Los  Angeles,  which  I 
had  rented  for  the  month's  engagement.  It 
was  an  enormous  success.  I  think  we  did  one 
thousand  two  hundred  dollars  the  first  night 
as  against  the  two  hundred  dollars  or  three 
hundred  dollars  to  which  we  usually  played. 
In  fact,  three  hundred  dollars  was  a  pretty  big 
house.  But  when  the  people  massed  around 
trying  to  buy  tickets  for  She  I  knew  I  had 
reached  my  turning  point. 

I  was  playing  "Job,"  the  servant  who  shakes 
with  terror  at  the  end  of  the  play  when  he  sees 
She  burn  up,  and  it  was  part  of  my  business 
to  fall  shrieking  on  the  stage  as  the  curtain  de- 
scended. But  some  stage  mechanism  failed  at 
the  critical  moment  in  this  scene  on  the  open- 
ing night;  the  panoramic  effect  was  spoiled, 
and  the  scene  was  received  with  derision  in- 
stead of  horror.  Sensing  disaster,  I  lay  on  the 
stage  crying — crying  that  I  had  lost  every- 
thing,   I  had  invested  every  dollar  I  had  in  the 


THE   FIGHTING!   MAN  41 

world  in  the  enterprise.  "It's  a  failure,"  I 
blubbered.  "I  would  not  let  good  enough 
alone." 

But  instead  of  that  the  novelty  and  the  grip 
of  the  play  proved  so  strong  that  the  next 
morning  there  was  a  long  line  at  the  box  of- 
fice window.  We  played  to  eight  thousand 
dollars  a  week,  which  meant  enormous  profits 
to  us,  as  the  company  expenses  were  consid- 
erably less  than  a  thousand.  Money  began  to 
roll  in  and  I  said  to  my  Pacific  Coast  actors, 
"We  are  going  to  New  York  with  this  piece." 

I  immediately  invested  part  of  my  profits 
in  tickets  from  Los  Angeles  to  the  Missouri 
River  by  way  of  the  northern  route  and  we 
started  away  to  conquer  the  East — to  show 
them  that  we  were  not  the  histrionic  rubes  they 
had  so  generously  esteemed  us  to  be. 

It  so  happened  that  Charles  Frohman  and 
William  Gillette  had  also  conceived  the  no- 
tion of  dramatizing  She  about  the  same  time 
that  the  notion  struck  me.  Frohman  produced 
the  piece  at  Niblo's  Garden,  New  York,  with 
great  success,  and  about  the  time  I  was  ready 


42  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

to  start  east  with  my  version  of  the  play,  he 
and  Gillette  were  ready  to  start  west  with 
theirs.  And  so  we  came  into  conflict  at  Min- 
neapolis. 

Frohman  had  an  enormous  production,  fine 
scenery,  and  carried  from  seventy-five  to  a 
hundred  people.  I  carried  a  small  production 
and  only  eight  people.  I  advertised  one  hun- 
dred people  on  the  stage,  for  I  used  to  pick 
up  local  supernumeraries  in  the  different  towns 
that  we  played.  As  Minneapolis  was  the  big- 
gest town  we'd  played  up  to  that  time,  I  got 
there  a  fortnight  ahead  of  the  company.  We 
were  to  play  one  week  ahead  of  the  enemy. 

Thinking  that  he  had  a  mere  boy  to  deal  with 
whose  wings  it  would  be  easy  to  clip,  Mr.  Froh- 
man had  sent  a  man  named  Charles  McGeachy 
out  to  JNIinneapolis  to  squelch  me  with  adver- 
tising matter  and  expose  me  as  a  faker.  This 
movement  on  Mr.  Frohman's  part  led  to  a  little 
misunderstanding  between  us  that  lasted  sev- 
eral years,  carried  across  the  ocean  and  was 
eventually  settled  in  London. 
.  Frohman's  man  put  large  advertisements  in 


"When  I  was  poor  but  happy" 
Charles  Frohman 


COPVmOMT,  INOWN  BROS. 

Daniel   Krohman  and  Isaac  Marcosson 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  43 

the  newspapers  declaring  that  the  Brady  Com- 
pany was  nothing  but  a  barnstorming  or- 
ganization composed  of  about  eight  persons, 
that  we  were  reinforced  by  local  "supers,"  that 
I  was  a  cheat  and  a  faker,  that  I  had  no  right 
to  produce  the  piece,  the  sole  right  to  which 
had  been  conveyed  to  Mr.  Frohman  by  Rider 
Haggard.  This  was  not  the  case,  since  Mr. 
Haggard  had  failed  properly  to  copyright  the 
book  in  the  United  States  and  in  consequence 
had  no  "American  rights"  to  convey  to  any- 
body. I  told  this  story  to  Rider  Haggard  in 
London  a  few  years  ago  at  a  dinner  and  he 
and  Mrs.  Haggard  and  myself  had  a  hearty 
laugh  over  it, 

McGeachy  published  all  these  statements  in 
the  St.  Paul  Globe  and  the  Minneapolis  Trib- 
une and  from  what  I  heard  he  was  in  high 
feather  over  the  crushing  blow  he  had  thus 
dealt  the  presumptuous  youngster  from  the 
coast.  But  there  was  one  factor  in  the  case 
which  the  astute  Mr.  McGeachy  in  his  enthu- 
siastic eagerness  to  make  a  hit  with  Mr.  Froh- 
man had  overlooked — the  libel  laws  of  the  State 


44  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

of  Minnesota.  No  sooner  was  his  advertise- 
ment published  than  I  called  on  the  most 
famous  criminal  lawyer  in  Minneapolis,  Will- 
iam W.  Irwin,  and  showed  him  the  paper,  and 
he  immediately  declared  the  thing  was  crim- 
inal libel.  Said  he,  "For  five  hundred  dollars, 
I  will  have  this  man  arrested  and  for  fifteen 
hundred  dollars,  I  will  guarantee  you  that  I 
will  have  him  indicted." 

I  peeled  fifteen  hundred  dollars  off  my  roll 
and  laid  the  same  on  his  desk.  "I'll  take  that 
much  worth,"  said  I. 

A  few  hours  later  Mr.  McGeachy  was 
snatched  out  of  his  bed  in  the  hotel  and  haled 
to  the  "cooler"  by  three  or  four  able-bodied 
Minneapolis  cops.  Nor  did  we  keep  the  fact 
a  secret.  The  papers  were  full  of  it  next  day 
and  it  was  a  tremendous  advertisement  for  my 
show.  In  fact,  we  captured  Minneapolis  by 
our  performance  of  She  while  the  enterprising 
McGeachy  was  cooling  his  heels  in  a  cell. 

That  experience  at  ^linneapolis  did  me  more 
good  in  a  business  way  than  anything  I  had 
ever  done  before.     The  news  of  it  was  scat- 


THE    FIGHTING;   MAN  45 

tered  abroad  in  the  land;  it  was  remembered; 
and  it  established  me  as  a  fighting  man.  In 
brief,  it  contained  this  warning — "Hands  off  I 
Let  Brady  alone !" 

I  was  only  twenty-three,  and  a  man  of  such 
tender  years,  however  tough  his  experience, 
would  naturally  be  regarded  by  the  managers 
as  an  easy  mark,  a  callow  youth,  one  not  to  be 
taken  seriously  as  a  competitor  in  the  field — 
one  who  could  be  effectively  flattered  or  bul- 
lied. But  by  putting  McGeachy  in  jail  I  had 
forestalled  this.  Any  man,  they  would  reckon, 
who  had  the  nerve  bodily  to  march  up  with  a 
handful  of  actors  and  scenery  that  you  could 
almost  load  on  a  wheelbarrow,  and  challenge 
to  combat  the  splendidly  organized  cohorts  of 
Frohman  was,  if  a  fool,  at  least  not  a  coward. 

I  could  sense  the  standing  my  row  with 
Frohman  had  given  me  the  instant  I  set  foot 
in  the  Rialto  as  a  manager.  The  Rialto  was 
then  in  the  neighborhood  of  Union  Square  and 
meant  something  then.  It  was  an  unorganized 
manager's  exchange.  To-day  it  is  only  a 
lounging  ground  for  actors  and  lies  in  the 


46  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

neighborhood  of  Forty-second  Street.  There 
we  used  to  meet  managers  from  all  parts  of  the 
United  States  and  book  our  shows.  We  booked 
in  three  ways:  first,  by  personal  contact;  sec- 
ond, by  correspondence;  third,  by  traveling 
with  the  company  and  booking  time  with  the 
local  theater  man  for  the  following  season. 
In  those  days,  if  a  company  fell  down,  failed 
to  please,  the  manager  of  the  theater  was 
thrown  on  his  own  resources  to  keep  his  house 
from  going  empty.  In  such  a  case,  he  would 
hurry  to  New  York,  go  to  a  variety  agent,  and 
get  a  company  together  to  play  the  open  time 
at  his  theater.  He  could  get  a  bill  of  eight 
turns  for  six  hundred  dollars — the  same  thing 
would  cost  him  four  thousand  dollars  to-day. 
But  all  that  has  been  remedied.  It  is  the  busi- 
ness of  the  great  booking  agencies  now  to  sup- 
ply the  manager  with  attractions,  and  their 
policy  is  never  to  let  a  house  go  dark. 

About  this  time  I  married  my  first  wife, 
which,  instead  of  making  me  more  conservative, 
curiously  made  me  more  daring.  I  suppose  it 
was   because    I   was   only   twenty-three   and 


THE   FIGHTING  MAN  47 

wanted  to  make  a  good  showing  in  her  eyes. 
Many  of  my  old  acquaintances  had  prospered 
in  the  East.  New  York  was  the  theatrical  cen- 
ter of  the  Western  Hemisphere.  There's  where 
the  people  were,  and  there's  where  the  money 
was.  I  was  something  of  a  prophet — I  saw  a 
vast  future  for  the  theater  of  New  York.  There 
was  no  theatrical  syndicate  at  the  time.  Charles 
Frohman  was  just  an  individual  operator  and 
Klaw  and  Erlanger  had  a  little  booking  office 
on  Fourteenth  Street,  near  Broadway.  As  to 
the  coast  men,  Al  Hayman,  who  had  got  to  be 
the  manager  of  the  Columbia  Theater  in  Chi- 
cago, now  controlled  all  the  theaters  of  that 
city.  David  Belasco  had  come  east  as  stage 
manager  with  James  A.  Hearn  with  whom  he 
faked  up  an  old  play  under  the  title  of  Hearts 
of  Oak.  Subsequently  he  had  connected  him- 
self with  the  Mallory  Brothers,  had  made  two 
or  three  successful  productions  with  them,  and 
then  renewed  the  sentimental  alliance  which  he 
had  formed  with  Charles  and  Daniel  Frohman 
at  the  time  the  Callendar  Minstrels  were  in  San 
Francisco, 


48  THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

While  I  was  having  the  row  with  Frohman 
in  Minneapolis,  Dion  Boucicault  advertised  an 
auction  sale  of  his  plays  at  the  Madison  Square 
Theater,  New  York.  I  came  on  to  attend  that 
sale,  determined,  if  possible,  to  buy  the  play. 
After  Dark  J  which  I'd  been  playing  on  lease  in 
the  West.  I  jumped  in,  began  bidding  and 
landed  the  play  for  eighteen  hundred  dollars. 
But  with  the  play  I  also  landed  a  lawsuit  with 
Augustin  Daly  which  cost  us  fifty  thousand 
dollars  apiece  in  legal  fees  before  we  got 
through  with  it,  lasted  thirteen  years,  went 
from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  federal  court  and 
twice  reached  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States. 

The  story  of  this  case  would  fill  a  volume. 
Daly  finally  got  judgment  for  thirty-seven 
thousand  six  hundred  dollars,  of  which  he 
could  only  collect  thirteen  thousand  dollars, 
for,  during  the  course  of  litigation,  part  of 
the  claim  had  become  outlawed.  In  a  word, 
the  case  was  as  follows:  In  1865  Daly  pro- 
duced a  play  called  Under  the  Gas  Light, 
in    which    was    a    sensational    railroad    scene 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  49 

that  had  never  before  been  done  in  New 
York.  Two  years  later,  Dion  Boucicault 
put  on  a  play  called  After  Dark,  which 
contained  a  colorable  imitation  of  Daly's  rail- 
road scene.  Daly  got  after  Boucicault  on  the 
ground  of  the  similarity  of  the  two  railroad 
scenes  and  Judge  Blatchford  rendered  a  de- 
cision in  favor  of  the  plaintiff.  That  was  in 
1867.  So,  when  I  produced  After  Dark  at  the 
People's  Theater  on  the  Bowery  about  1890, 
Mr.  Daly  served  me  with  a  temporary  injunc- 
tion. I  had  little  faith  in  lawyers  and  having 
a  theory  that  the  papers  had  been  illegally 
served  on  me  when  the  hearing  for  the  per- 
manent injunction  was  called,  I  had  the  ef- 
frontery to  walk  into  court  with  the  papers 
and  start  to  argue  my  own  case.  But  the  judge 
cut  me  very  short. 

"Where's  your  lawyer?"  he  demanded, 
frowning  down  upon  me. 

"I  don't  want  any,"  said  I  with  supreme 
effrontery — I  was  only  twenty-three,  remem- 
ber. 

"You  must  get  one,"  said  the  judge. 


50  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

I  turned  round  and  saw  standing  right  back 
of  me  ex-Judge  Dittenhoefer,  who  had  been 
pointed  out  to  me  as  a  famous  theatrical  law- 
yer. 

"Are  you  Judge  Dittenhoefer?'" 

"Yes,"  said  he. 

I  shoved  the  papers  into  his  hand.  "Will 
you  take  this  case?" 

"I  will  represent  you  at  this  hearing.*" 

"How  much?"  said  I. 

"Two  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,"  said  he. 

I  handed  him  a  check  and  he  went  to  the 
front,  got  an  adjournment,  and  one  week  later 
sprung  a  technicality  on  the  court — Judge 
Wallace — which  upset  Judge  Blatchford's  de- 
cision and  led  to  thirteen  years'  litigation.  It 
was  the  simplest  thing  on  earth.  On  the  title 
page  of  Under  the  Gas  Light  was  printed, 
"Under  the  Gas  Light,  a  Story  of  Love  and 
Life  in  New  York."  That  was  the  published 
book.  But  in  the  printed  copy  that  had  been 
filed  for  copyright  the  title  page  read,  "Under 
the  Gas  Light,  a  Panorama  of  Lives  and 
Homes  in  New  York."   The  difference  in  the 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN  51 

sub-title  on  the  books  which  were  being  sold  to 
the  public  and  the  sub-title  registered  in  Wash- 
ington furnished  Judge  Wallace  with  grounds 
for  holding  the  copyright  to  be  invalid.  As  I 
said,  this  cost  me  a  lot  of  money  and  kept  me 
in  the  papers  almost  continuously  for  thirteen 
years,  but  it  established  me  in  New  York  as  a 
man  who  was  not  to  be  monkeyed  with. 

When  I  left  Minneapolis  to  come  to  New 
York  for  the  Boucicault  sale,  McGeachy  was 
still  in  a  cell,  pondering  the  libel  laws  of  Min- 
nesota. But  in  a  few  days  the  court  let  him 
out  on  ten  thousand  dollars  bail  to  await  the 
action  of  the  Grand  Jury  for  criminal  libel. 
Charles  Frohman  put  up  the  amount  in  cash. 
Then  McGeachy,  on  being  released,  went  to 
New  York,  but  had  a  row  with  Frohman  and 
refused  to  go  back  and  stand  trial,  which  put 
the  manager  in  the  way  of  losing  his  ten  thou- 
sand dollars.  I  had  not  been  in  town  more 
than  two  days  when  I  received  a  polite  letter 
from  Mr.  Frohman  asking  me  to  call  on  him. 
He  had  no  theater,  was  occupying  a  little  office 
at  Broadway  and  Thirtieth   Street,  and  ten 


52  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

thousand  dollars  looked  pretty  big  to  him  just 
then. 

While  I  was  turning  Frohman's  letter  over 
in  my  mind  I  met  McGeachy  on  the  street  and 
told  him  about  it. 

"Don't  you  go  up  there,'*  said  he.  "I  had  a 
row  with  him  and  I  won't  go  back  to  ^Minne- 
apolis.  I'm  going  to  make  him  forfeit  the  ten 
thousand."  Then,  after  pondering  a  moment, 
"Why  don't  you  make  him  give  you  five  thou- 
sand?" 

I  turned  on  my  heel  and  quit  McGeachy, 
and  went  up  to  see  Frohman.  It  was  the  first 
time  in  my  life  I'd  ever  met  that  gentleman. 
He  didn't  waste  any  time  in  coming  to  the 
point. 

"ISIr.  Brady,"  said  he,  "you've  got  me  in  a 
box.  McGeachy  refuses  to  go  back  and  stand 
trial.  If  he  doesn't,  I  shall  lose  my  ten  thou- 
sand dollars,  which  I  can't  afford  to  do.  I 
want  you  to  compromise  with  me.  Wire  your 
attorney  in  St.  Paul  to  cease  his  activity  and 
with  some  local  influence  that  I  can  bring  to 
bear  I  can  get  the  thing  quashed." 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  53 

"And  what  then?"  said  I,  waiting  for  the 
most  interesting  part  of  the  proposition. 

"If  you  will  do  it,  you  may  rest  assured  that 
if  I  can  do  anything  for  you  in  the  future  I 
will  do  it!" 

"All  right,  Mr.  Frohman,"  said  I,  "that 
goes  I"  We  shook  hands  and  I  walked  out  of 
his  office. 

It  was  not  that  I  was  overawed  by  Mr,  Froh- 
man's  personality  or  won  by  his  cordiality  that 
I  so  quickly  acquiesced  in  his  proposal.  Nor 
was  it  sheer  good  nature.  I  was  still  pretty 
sore  about  what  he'd  sent  McG^achy  on  to  do 
to  me  in  Minneapolis.  But  as  I  said,  I  was 
something  of  a  prophet.  I  had  watched  Mr. 
Frohman  and  felt  that  he  was  destined  to  do 
big  things  in  the  theater  world  and  I  now 
thought  it  the  part  of  wisdom  to  make  a  friend 
of  him.  I  confess  I  felt  pretty  big,  having 
Charles  Frohman  under  such  a  debt  to  me,  as 
I  had  no  end  of  confidence  in  his  word  of  honor 
as  well  as  in  his  gratitude. 

Three  years  later  I  had  a  production  called 
The  New  Souths  which  was  booked  with  Mr. 


64  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

Frohman  at  the  Colonial  Theater  in  Boston. 
The  play  was  so  successful  in  New  York  that 
I  wanted  to  keep  it  there  a  while  longer  and  I 
asked  him  to  release  me  from  the  Boston  en- 
gagement. But  he  claimed  that  he  was  power- 
less to  do  so  as  the  theater  was  under  the  man- 
agement of  William  Harris.  I  can  almost 
imagine  that  he  put  his  tongue  in  his  cheek  as 
he  said  this  I  I  reminded  him  of  the  promise 
he  made  to  me  when  I  saved  him  the  ten  thou- 
sand dollars,  but  he  simply  reiterated  that  his 
hands  were  tied  and  he  could  do  nothing.  And 
so  I  walked  out  of  his  office,  a  very  much  disil- 
lusioned and  disgusted  man! 

Not  a  great  while  later  Mr.  Frohman  pro- 
duced in  New  York  a  Chinese  play  called  The 
First  BorUj  which  had  been  highly  successful 
in  San  Francisco.  At  the  same  time  Holbrook 
Blinn  put  on  at  Hammerstein's  Olympic  a 
play  called  The  Cat  and  the  Cherub.  This 
piece  was  by  Chester  Femald  and  was  like  the 
Frohman  play  in  the  respect  that  all  the  char- 
acters were  Chinese. 

Frohman  made  arrangements  to  send  The 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  55 

First  Born  to  London,  and  as  soon  as  I  learned 
of  this  movement  on  his  part  I  secured  the 
English  rights  to  The  Cat  and  the  Cherub. 
Then  I  got  in  touch  with  Mr.  Blinn,  sent  him 
to  England,  and  he  secured  a  booking  at  The 
Prince  of  Wales  Theater  on  a  guarantee  of 
two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  a  week,  which 
meant  a  profit  to  us  of  eighty  pounds.  And 
this  I  did  without  a  soul  on  this  side  knowing 
anything  about  it.  Then  I  quietly  sneaked 
The  Cat  and  the  Cherub  Company  on  board  a 
boat,  five  days  before  Frohman  proposed  sail- 
ing with  his  company,  and  when  my  people 
were  about  half-way  across  the  ocean  an- 
nounced that  I  was  going  to  produce  the 
piece  in  London.  The  news  fell  like  a  bomb 
in  the  Frohman  camp.  Mr.  Frohman  im- 
mediately closed  his  company  here  and  raced 
across  the  ocean  in  order  to  beat  me  over  there. 
But  with  the  five  days'  start  I  had,  I  reached 
London,  opened  on  a  Saturday  night,  and 
made  a  big  hit.  The  Cat  and  the  Cherub  con- 
tinued on  there  for  a  year  at  a  weekly  profit 
of  eighty  pounds. 


56  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

Mr.  Frohman  opened  the  following  Mon- 
day. He  had  no  guarantee.  He  had  both  the 
theater  end  of  it  and  the  play  end  of  it  and 
The  First  Born^  although  it  was  a  far  better 
play  than  The  Cat  and  the  Cherub,  was  a 
ghastly  fizzle  in  London  and  closed  at  the  end 
of  seven  days,  with  a  loss  of  more  than  thirty 
thousand  dollars  expenses.  The  Cat  and  the 
Cherub  was  played  by  six  people,  whereas  The 
First  Born  required  sixty.  Neither  of  the 
plays  was  attractive.  But  I  got  a  guarantee 
and  my  fares  were  paid  by  the  English  people, 
while  my  rival  had  to  take  all  the  risk  himself. 

At  any  rate,  that  was  the  way  I  got  even 
with  Mr.  Frohman  for  not  keeping  his  word, 
and  I  assure  you  it  did  me  no  harm  in  the 
business  world  1 

In  a  story  like  this  it  is  necessary  sometimes 
to  digress  apparently  in  order  to  follow  a 
branch  to  its  end,  as  I  did  in  the  matter  of  the 
lawsuit  with  Daly  and  the  "misunderstanding" 
with  Frohman,  and  then  return  to  the  trunk 
line  of  the  narrative.  Obviously,  it  would  not 
be  possible  to  thread  or  weave  a  branch  like  the 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  57 

story  of  the  Daly  lawsuit  through  the  fabric  of 
this  work. 

To  revert  then  to  the  main  line  of  the  story. 
After  acquiring  the  play  After  Dark  at  the 
Boucicault  sale,  I  traveled  with  it  in  the  East 
and  made  a  success  of  it.  And  After  Dark 
brought  out  James  J.  Corbett,  the  pugilist,  as 
I  shall  point  out  later  on. 

I  had  made  money  in  the  theater  business 
and  was  very  ambitious.  But  the  advent  of 
Corbett  deflected  me  for  the  time  being  into 
the  field  of  pugilism.  And  while  I  did  not 
abandon  my  theatrical  enterprises — on  the  con- 
trary, I  was  producing  plays  right  along  while 
I  was  managing  Corbett — I  can  now  see  that 
if  I  had  never  touched  pugilism  but  had  con- 
centrated on  my  theater  work,  I  would  prob- 
ably have  been  much  farther  along  in  that  line 
than  I  am  to-day.  Unfortunately,  I  went  in 
for  pugilism  at  a  formative  period  of  my  ca- 
reer. Before  I  had  had  time  to  lay  a  solid 
foundation  for  my  reputat^n  as  a  producer  of 
plays,  I  became  identified  with  the  prize  ring, 
and  this  fact  was  reflected  in  the  box  ofiices  at 


58  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

the  theaters  I  managed.  Please  remember,  it 
is  not  the  sporting  public,  but  the  general  pub- 
lic which  consists  largely  of  women  and  chil- 
dren who  are  patrons  of  the  playhouse.  Sport- 
ing people  would  go  to  any  event  that  Brady 
might  manage  and  the  money  would  flow  in. 
But  there  was  always  danger  of  the  name 
Brady  keeping  the  women  and  children  away 
from  the  theater.  And  the  theater  was  a  much 
bigger  proposition  than  the  prize  ring!  Un- 
discriminating  persons,  either  having  no 
knowledge  of  my  past  as  a  manager  or  not 
stopping  to  consider  it,  didn't  see  how  it  was 
possible  for  a  man  who  was  interested  in  sports 
to  know  anything  about  the  drama  or  the  stage, 
and  a  good  many  of  them,  forgetting  that  I 
had  trained  under  some  of  the  best  masters  of 
the  drama  that  the  world  has  produced,  thought 
I  could  be  nothing  but  coarse  in  my  tastes  and 
pernicious  in  my  influence. 

About  the  time  that  I  started  out  with  After 
Dark,  Corbett  had  electrified  the  sporting 
world.  An  amateur,  known  only  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, he  did  some  brilliant  work  that  brought 


Weston,  the  walker 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  59 

him  into  national  prominence.  He  had  been 
of  the  Olympic  Club  of  San  Francisco  of  which 
he  finally  became  boxing  instructor.  He  had 
met  many  obscure  boxers,  local  celebrities  and 
the  like,  and  his  experience  with  these  had 
opened  his  eyes.  Corbett  was  an  observing,  a 
progressive  man.  He  saw  the  weak  spots  of 
the  old-fashioned  methods  which  the  world,  be- 
cause of  their  antiquity,  had  accepted  without 
question.  He  realized  that  pugilists  are  not  in- 
ventive, that  they  are  kangaroo-headed  and 
sheeplike,  that  a  bit  of  so-called  "ring  wisdom" 
might  be  handed  down  for  generations  with- 
out change.  Any  question  of  accepted  ring 
tactics  was  regarded  as  the  rankest  heresy.  But 
Corbett  was  an  iconoclast.  Whenever  he  saw 
an  error  he  went  about  correcting  it  in  his  own 
way.  Fiui:hermore,  he  realized  that  a  man 
trained  in  the  old  school  would  be  more  or  less 
confused  by  any  departure  on  the  part  of  his 
opponent.  So  Corbett  not  only  mastered  the 
old  methods,  learned  the  old  ring  secrets,  but 
invented  methods  of  his  own  which  the  other 
fellow  didn't  know  anything  about.    Further- 


60  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

more,  he  was  capable  of  changing  his  play,  so 
to  speak,  with  every  new  event. 

When  Corbett  had  attained  some  local  no- 
toriety, an  Irish  pugilist  named  Jack  Burke 
came  to  San  Francisco  and  boxed  six  rounds 
with  him.  Corbett  did  more  than  hold  his  own 
with  Burke  which  compelled  the  leaders  of  the 
San  Francisco  sporting  world  to  begin  to  take 
him  seriously,  and  they  presently  conceived  the 
idea  of  matching  him  against  Peter  Jackson, 
a  black  man,  who  had  beaten  everybody  on  the 
Pacific  Coast.  Jackson  was  born  in  the  West 
Indies,  but  he  had  now  come  to  the  Pacific 
Coast  from  Australia. 

The  match  was  arranged — an  international 
event,  since  Jackson  was  a  British  subject.  It 
was  fought  for  sixty-one  rounds,  but  the  club 
declared  it  no  contest  and  refused  to  pay  the 
purse.  The  reason  for  this  was  that  after  the 
thirtieth  round  both  men  stopped  fighting  and 
did  nothing  but  circle  around  the  ring,  striking 
no  blows.  Corbett  claimed  that  as  Jackson  was 
a  famous  boxer  he  should  have  done  the  lead- 
ing, forced  the  fight;  and  refused  to  carry  the 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  61 

fight  to  him.  Corbett  urged  the  negro  to  make 
the  pace,  but  Jackson  refused  to  do  so,  and  the 
match  was  declared  a  farce.  This  contest  added 
greatly  to  Corbett's  reputation,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  John  L.  Sullivan  had  drawn  the  color 
line  against  Jackson  and  flatly  refused  to  meet 
him,  although  the  negro  had  repeatedly  chal- 
lenged the  big  fellow.  Sullivan  boasted  that 
he  had  never  met  a  black  man  in  the  ring  and 
never  would,  which  was  simply  a  pretense  ad- 
vanced to  avoid  a  contest  with  Jackson.  To 
my  certain  knowledge  Sullivan  had  boxed  with 
a  negro  at  San  Bernardino,  California,  during 
one  of  his  exhibition  tours.  He  had  also  thrown 
off  his  coat  and  jumped  into  the  ring  in  Boston 
at  one  time  to  meet  George  Godfrey,  who  had 
taunted  him  with  being  afraid  of  him.  Sul- 
livan had  offered  to  fight  Godfrey  for  nothing, 
but  the  thing  was  stopped 

The  match  with  Jackson  caused  great  ex- 
citement throughout  the  country,  put  Corbett 
in  the  lime-light,  and  he  started  out  from  Cal- 
ifornia exhibiting  with  a  minstrel  show.  At 
this  time  I  was  playing  the  leading  part,  "Old 


62  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

Tom,"'  in  After  Dark.  I  was  making  a  great 
feature  of  the  music-hall  scene  in  the  play  and 
I  wired  Corbett,  offering  him  an  engagement 
to  appear  in  that  scene.  After  some  negotia- 
tion, I  got  him  to  join  my  company,  paying 
him  one  hundred  seventy-five  dollars  a  week. 

No  sooner  had  he  become  one  of  the  com- 
pany than  he  and  I  got  to  be  pals  and  he  told 
me  all  about  all  his  ambitions  and  hopes.  He 
wanted  to  become  champion  and  was  sure  he 
could  do  it.  This  was  some  ambition,  I  re- 
minded him,  since  to  realize  it  he'd  have  to 
beat  the  great  John  L.,  the  idol  and  ideal  of 
the  sporting  fraternity,  the  champion  of  the 
world,  the  most  famous  if  not  the  greatest  prize- 
fighter of  all  times.  I  did  not  know  then,  but 
I  know  now,  that  Sullivan's  record  was  all  a 
foolish  one.  He  never  really  earned  the  place 
he  occupied  in  public  esteem.  lie  had  won  the 
championship  by  beating  a  man  of  fifty  named 
Paddy  Ryan,  while  he,  Sullivan,  was  twenty- 
three  or  twenty-four.  And  he  had  fought  an- 
other long  bout  with  Jake  Kilrain  in  Missis- 
sippi in  which  he  violated  all  the  rules  of  the 


PERMISSION   OF  ROBERT  COSTER 


Jake  Kilrain 


John  L.  Sullivan 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  68 

game — ^jumping  on  his  opponent,  using  his 
knees,  etc. — and  should  have  been  declared 
loser  by  a  foul.  Again,  he  had  failed  to  defeat 
Mitchell  in  France.  In  fact,  he  had  actually 
to  bribe  the  Englishman  in  order  to  secure  a 
draw.  Sullivan  had  sat  in  his  corner  of  the 
ring  on  that  malodorous  occasion  and  shouted 
to  Mitchell,  "How  much  will  you  take  to  make 
it  a  draw?" 

"Twelve  hundred  dollars,"  said  Mitchell. 

"Done,"  said  Sullivan,  and  he  paid  it. 

I  admired  Corbett's  work  and  saw  great  pos- 
sibilities in  him,  but  I  frankly  urged  him  to 
keep  out  of  the  way  of  John  L.  But  he  wasn't 
a  bit  discouraged  by  what  I  said.  As  usual, 
he  had  some  inside  information  of  his  own.  A 
year  or  so  before  he  had  met  Sullivan  at  a  bene- 
fit given  at  the  Grand  Opera  House  in  San 
Francisco,  he  told  me.  They  had  boxed  three 
friendly  rounds,  both  wearing  dress  suits,  since 
the  church  or  other  highly  respectable  institu- 
tion for  whose  benefit  they  were  sparring, 
would  not  stand  for  the  regular  garb  of  the 
ring.    It  was  a  light,  trifling  little  match,  ap- 


64  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

parently.  They  wore  gloves  that  looked  like 
pillows  and  each  simply  tapped  the  other  in 
a  playful  way.  But  this  little  match  was  of 
immense  benefit  to  Corbett.  In  it  he  had  dis- 
covered that  Sullivan  had  no  free  use  of  his  left 
hand  at  all^  that  he  had  to  depend  entirely  on 
his  right,  and  that  he,  Corbett,  could  hit  him 
when,  where  and  how  he  pleased. 

When  he  had  imparted  this  precious  bit  of 
information,  Corbett  sat  and  looked  at  me  quiz- 
zically for  a  few  moments  and  I  realized  that 
I  had  not  only  found  a  great  boxer  but  a  ring 
general  and  a  psychologist  as  well.  I  also  dis- 
covered another  thing  that  applies  in  every 
walk  of  life  where  one  man  comes  into  conflict 
with  another:  that  our  strength  lies  largely  in 
the  knowledge  of  the  weakness  of  the  other 
fellow ! 

Corbett  continued  with  After  Dark  almost 
a  full  season.  About  this  time,  artother  won- 
derful pugilist  had  flashed  across  the  horizon 
and  had  won  some  wonderful  battles  in  Lon- 
don. His  name  was  Frank  P.  Slavin  and  he 
also  hailed  from  Australia.    Slavin  had  beaten 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  65 

two  or  three  Englishmen  at  the  National 
Sporting  Club  in  London,  and  all  England, 
anxious  that  somebody  should  beat  Sullivan, 
now  hailed  Slavin  as  the  man  to  do  it.  Charles 
Mitchell,  who  styled  himself  England's  boxing 
champion  and  who  had  kept  himself  in  the  lime- 
light for  years  by  the  fact  that  he  had  fought 
a  "draw"  with  John  L.  Sullivan  in  Chantilly, 
in  France,  secured  the  management  of  Slavin 
and  immediately  brought  him  to  the  United 
States.  Slavin  met  two  or  three  inferior  men 
around  New  York  City  in  short  bouts  and 
proved  himself  to  be  a  wonderfully  hard  hitter, 
and  Mitchell  began  taunting  Sullivan  through 
the  newspapers.  A  great  verbal  war  began  be- 
tween Mitchell  and  Sullivan  which  filled  the 
sporting  pages  of  the  papers  and  kept  the  pub- 
lic interested  and  eager  for  Sullivan  to  get 
into  the  ring  and  again  demonstrate  that  he  was 
the  champion.  Corbett  was  now  dragged  in 
as  a  possibility,  which  made  a  great  general 
furor.  The  campaign  of  vilification  grew  more 
and  more  bitter,  Mitchell,  the  Cockney,  throw- 
ing mud  at  the  big  fellow  one  day,  Sullivan 


66  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

answering  the  next,  and  Corbett  and  Slavin 
joining  in  the  melee  of  words.  In  a  short  time 
this  row  got  the  public  boxing  mad.  New  Or- 
leans sporting  men  had  successfully  started  and 
incorporated  an  athletic  club  down  there  and 
big  purses  were  being  given  and  great  fights 
were  being  held  between  light  and  middle 
weights.  The  old  prize-ring  rules  had  gone 
out  of  vogue  and  there  was  a  tremendous 
amount  of  interest  in  the  new  style  of  boxing 
under  the  Marquis  of  Queensbury  rules.  By 
the  old  rules,  the  moment  a  man  was  knocked 
down,  the  round  was  over  and  he  was  given  a 
half  minute's  rest,  but  the  Marquis  of  Queens- 
biuy  rules  compelled  a  man  to  fight  for  three 
minutes  each  round,  and  if  he  were  knocked 
down,  he  had  to  get  up  within  ten  seconds  or 
lose.  Sullivan  had  won  all  of  his  contests  under 
the  old  rules.  He  had  never  been  tried  out 
imder  the  Queensbury  rules  in  a  championship 
contest,  and  the  public  was  anxious  that  he 
should  be,  as  they  thought  he  could  make  any 
one  of  "those  fighters"  jump  through  a  key- 
hole, as  he  put  it.    The  big  fellow's  close  ad- 


COPYRIGHT,  BROWN  BROS. 


The  Marquis  of  Queensberry 


co^moHT,  •nowN 


Charlie  Mitchell 
(Ex-champion  of  the  world) 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  67 

herents  had  an  idea  that  all  that  he  had  to  do 
was  to  scowl  at  his  opponents  and  frighten 
them  to  death.  In  fact,  he  had  succeeded  time 
and  time  again  by  these  brow-beating  tactics 
in  the  four-round  bouts  that  were  being  given 
wdth  enormous  success  at  Madison  Square  Gar- 
den. On  other  occasions,  when  traveling  from 
one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other,  and  going 
into  small  towns,  Sullivan  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  offering  a  hundred  dollars  to  any  local 
man  who  would  stand  before  him  for  four 
rounds.  If  anybody  had  the  hardihood  to  at- 
tempt this,  the  Boston  gladiator  would  stand 
in  his  corner  and  glower  and  scowl  at  the 
stranger  and  frighten  him  so  that  he  would  go 
down  and  out  the  first  time  he  was  hit. 

Sullivan  did  not  have  much  money  and  the 
purses  that  were  being  offered  down  in  New 
Orleans  were  very  large  and  interesting  to 
him.  Up  to  that  time  he  had  never  been  able 
to  engage  in  a  championship  battle  for  gate 
receipts.  He  used,  in  order  to  avoid  the  police, 
to  go  off  to  some  lonely  spot  where  there  would 
be  only  one  or  two  hundred  persons  to  witness 


68  THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

the  bout,  and  fight  for  purses  of  ten  thousand 
dollars  a  side. 

John  L.  was  known  as  a  spendthrift.  We 
used  to  read  special  stories  in  the  papers  of  his 
making  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  dollars  and  scattering  it  away  broadcast. 
This  was  all  nonsense.  During  all  of  his  career, 
Sullivan  never  made  any  great  amount  of 
money.  He  was  beaten  by  Corbett  just  at  the 
time  that  money-making  in  pugilism  began. 
Up  to  that  time  no  such  purses  as  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars  had  ever  been  offered.  That 
was  what  Corbett  and  Sullivan  fought  for  and 
Sullivan,  thinking  that  he  had  a  soft  snap  in 
Corbett,  insisted  that  the  winner  should  take 
all.    And  the  winner  did  take  it  all! 

All  of  a  sudden  one  morning  Sullivan  came 
out  in  the  newspapers  with  a  grand  "defi"  to 
the  world,  stating  in  his  letter  that  he  was  ready 
to  enter  the  ring  again  providing  his  opponent 
would  bet  ten  thousand  dollars  on  the  side  and 
the  winner  to  take  the  whole  purse.  He  stipu- 
lated that  the  ten  thousand  dollars  should  be 
put  up  in  four  payments,  and  stated  his  choice 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN  69 

as  first,  Charles  Mitchell,  second,  Frank  Slavin, 
and  third,  James  J.  Corbett. 

Corbett  and  I  were  playing  After  Dark  in 
Philadelphia  when  Sullivan's  challenge  ap- 
peared. The  Boston  man  had  announced  in 
his  letter  that  his  financial  representative  would 
be  at  The  World  office  the  next  morning  at 
ten  o'clock.  So  I  took  twenty-five  hundred 
dollars  of  my  own  money,  caught  an  early  train 
to  New  York  and  was  on  hand  at  the  ap- 
pointed time. 

I  met  the  sporting  editor  of  The  Worlds 
Mr.  Joe  Eakins,  and  before  either  Mitchell  or 
Slavin  had  got  out  of  bed  had  covered  Sulli- 
van's money  for  Corbett,  who  by  this  means 
obtained  first  call.  Mitchell,  furious  that  he 
had  overlooked  the  opportunity  for  Slavin — ^he 
had  no  idea  of  fighting  Sullivan  himself,  as  he 
firmly  believed  that  his  man  could  have 
whipped  the  big  fellow  in  a  couple  of  rounds — 
tried  to  bamboozle  us  out  of  the  match,  using 
the  silly  arguments  that  Corbett  was  nobody 
at  all,  an  upstart,  while  Slavin  had  fought  his 
way  up  through  the  world,  had  defeated  men 


70  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

in  wonderfully  short  time,  and  was  therefore 
entitled  to  the  contest  with  Sullivan.  SuUiVan, 
evidently  thinking  Cdrbett  was  the  easier  of  the 
two,  was  mightily  pleased  the  way  it  came  out. 

The  next  thing  was  to  get  the  seven  thousand 
five  hundred  dollars  that  we  had  to  put  up  to 
cover  Sullivan's  money.  But  Phil  Dwyer,  Ed- 
ward Kearney,  Jr.,  Colonel  Fred  MacLouie 
and  Mattie  Lewee  Corbett  chipped  in  and 
made  up  ilie  amount. 

When  the  news  of  the  match  became  known, 
the  whole  country  went  wild  with  pugilistic  ex- 
citement. The  event  was  to  be  pulled  off  in 
New  Orleans,  September  9,  1892.  In  fact,  so 
great  was  the  interest  in  the  coming  fight  that 
up  to  the  middle  of  September  even  the  presi- 
dential election  was  swamped  by  the  stuff  that 
was  published  in  the  papers  about  it.  Page 
after  page  was  devoted  to  the  contest,  and  later 
every  prominent  newspaper  in  the  land  kept  a 
special  man  at  the  training  quarters  of  each 
pugilist. 


Ill 

As  I  said  before,  I  was  paying  Corbett  one 
hundred  seventy-five  dollars  a  week  to  box  in 
the  vaudeville  scene  in  After  Dark,  Within 
twenty-four  hours  after  the  Corbett- Sullivan 
articles  had  been  signed,  we  were  flooded  with 
telegrams  from  all  parts  of  the  United  States, 
offering  us  fabulous  terms  for  his  appearance. 

The  first  contract  we  signed,  as  I  remember, 
was  for  fifteen  hundred  dollars  a  week  at  the 
Lyceum  Theater,  Philadelphia.  The  highest 
price  of  admission  to  this  house  was  fifty  cents. 
This  contract  provided  that  Corbett  was  to 
meet  a  new  man  every  night  and  attempt  to 
stop  him  or  put  him  out  in  four  rounds.  Such 
a  pastime  was  permitted  at  that  time  in  Phila- 
delphia, which  was  then  known  as  the  home  of 
many  athletic  aspirants.  The  term  "athletic 
aspirant"  was  applied  to  the  fellows  who  had 
a  punch  and  who  probably  could  go  one  or  two 
rounds  with  a  champion  and  make  a  showing. 

71 


72  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

We  went  to  Philadelphia  to  play  the  en- 
gagement, but  in  a  very  few  nights  found 
that  this  kind  of  game  was  not  for  Corbett. 
Now,  if  you're  going  to  put  a  man  out  in  a  four- 
round  bout,  you  can't  do  it  by  dancing  about 
and  sparring  with  him.  You've  got  to  do  some 
very  hard  hitting.  Corbett's  hands  we're  deli- 
cately framed  and  when  he  used  them  with  full 
force  in  such  a  match,  if  he  wanted  to  whip  a 
man,  he  would  have  to  take  a  chance  of  hitting 
him  on  the  jaw,  knocking  him  senseless  with 
one  blow.  But  by  doing  this  there  was  always 
danger  of  his  breaking  his  knuckles.  After 
tackling  two  of  these  "all  comers,"  as  we  used 
to  call  them,  we  found  if  we  continued  that 
course  of  making  money  our  man  would  have 
no  hands  with  which  to  fight  Sullivan. 

One  of  the  toughest  of  the  "all  comers'*  aii 
that  time  in  Philadelphia  was  a  man  who 
worked  in  the  gas  house.  His  name  was  Mike 
Monahan,  and  he  had  succeeded  in  standing  up 
for  four  rounds  before  every  champion  that  had 
come  to  the  City  of  Brotherly  Love  for  years. 
On  the  first  night  of  Corbett's  engagement, 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  73 

who  should  appear  at  the  stage  door  but  Mike 
Monahan,  demanding  a  chance  to  go  on  with 
the  man  who  thought  he  could  beat  Sullivan. 
Corbett  looked  Monahan  over  and  made  up  his 
mind  to  keep  him  at  a  safe  distance.  That 
night  Corbett  boxed  with  another  man  who 
afterward  played  quite  an  important  part  in 
his  history.  This  was  Connie  McVey,  who  up 
to  this  day  is  a  well-known  character  along  the 
Rialto  in  New  York.  Connie  went  on  the  first 
night,  took  Corbett's  punching  for  a  couple  of 
rounds  and  then  sought  a  safe  spot  on  the  stage, 
lay  down  and  was  counted  out.  He  got  twen- 
ty-five dollars  for  doing  this,  and  at  the  same 
time  the  Corbett  management  came  to  realize 
that  he  was  a  very  valuable  man,  and  we  put 
him  on  the  salary  list.  Connie's  great  value 
lay  in  knowing  how  to  be  knocked  out  better 
than  any  man  I  had  ever  seen — as  I  shall  show 
you  later. 

Every  night  INIonahan  reported  at  the  stage 
door  and  every  night  Corbett  side-stepped  the 
issue.  Monahan  looked  as  if  he  had  an  iron 
jaw.    It  was  as  wide  as  his  forehead  and  his. 


74.  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

face  was  covered  with  scars.  He  was  a  tough 
proposition.  We  had  some  hope  of  escaping 
an  encounter  with  this  fellow.  But  toward  the 
middle  of  the  week  the  sporting  editors  of 
Philadelphia  took  up  the  matter  and  said  that 
the  challenger  of  John  L.  Sullivan  was  afraid 
to  meet  Mike  Monahan,  the  terror  of  the  gas 
house.  These  sneering  comments  hecame 
stronger  and  stronger  and  presently  the  As- 
sociated Press  got  busy  and  scattered  it  broad- 
cast throughout  the  country.  When  Friday 
night  came  I  said  to  Corbett,  "Jim,  it's  no  use! 
You've  got  to  meet  Monahan  to-morrow  night 
or  go  out  of  the  town  in  disgrace!" 

We  told  Mike  that  he  was  to  have  his  chance 
Saturday  night  and  he  said,  "If  I  do,  that  will 
be  the  end  of  Corbett  r 

Nothing  was  left  but  that  we  should  do 
something  to  put  fear  into  the  heart  of  Mona- 
han. At  last  we  hit  on  a  scheme.  We  arranged 
that  he  was  to  put  on  his  tights  in  the  same 
room  with  Corbett  and  his  sparring  partner, 
Jim  Daly,  of  Philadelphia.  It  was  to  be  a 
third-degree  process.    We  put  him  in  a  chair 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  75 

between  Corbett  and  Daly.  After  a  time,  Daly 
said  to  Cbfbett,'"Say,  Jim,  you  knbw*  that  man 
whose  jaW  ydti  bi'oke  in  Hartford  last  week?" 

Corbett  nodded. 

''He's  no  better." 

"Isn't  he  out  of  the  hospital  yet?"  said  Cor- 
bett. 

Monahan  went  on  dressing. 

Then  Daily  said,  "Anybody  that  goes  intb 
the  ting  with  ybti^  Jim,  dught  to  haVe  his  life 
insured." 

Still  not  a  word  from  Monahan. 

Story  after  story  they  told  about  the  men 
Corbett  had  sent  to  the  hospital,  but  Monahan 
would  simply  say,  "Is  tliat  so?  That  sounds 
good!"    Nothing  Wmild  feeze  him. 

At  the  end  of  the  third-degree  business  wfe 
fdund  that  we  wtmld  hare  to  take  a  final  long 
chance  with  him.  It  must  be  understood  that 
Corbett  was  not  in  condition  at  this  time.  He 
was  not  in  training  and  that  is  very  essential 
to  boxing.  Ten-thirty  was  reached.  I  was  the 
referee  and  the  time  keeper.  The  theater  was 
simply  jammed.    The  sporting  community  had 


76  THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

paid  all  kinds  of  prices  to  get  in.  Seats  were 
sold  on  the  sidewalk  for  ten  dollars  apiece. 
Philadelphia  felt  that  at  last  Corbett  was  going 
to  get  a  real  test  from  the  invincible  gas-house 
giant.  • 

Just  before  we  went  into  the  ring  Corbett 
came  to  me  and  said,  "Now,  Bill,  I  will  take 
one  chance  with  this  fellow  and  if  I  fail  you 
will  have  to  call  time  and  make  the  rounds 
very  short." 

I  believe  that  Corbett  at  this  particular  point 
feared  Monahan  more  than  he  feared  John  L. 
Sullivan  when  he  got  into  the  ring  with  him 
later  on. 

Monahan  came  into  the  ring  with  the  confi- 
dence of  a.  Napoleon.  The  bell  sounded,  they 
went  to  the  center.  He  made  a  speedy  rush  at 
Corbett  and  hit  him  a  quick  blow  in  the  stom- 
ach, then  grabbed  him  and  tried  to  throw  him 
off  the  stage.  Instantly  there  was  pandemo- 
nium in  the  house.  Monahan  rushed  Corbett 
all  over  the  place.  But  Corbett  took  no  chances. 
He  stood  back  and  gritted  his  teeth.  Monahan 
rushed  for  him.     It  looked  bad  for  Corbett, 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  77 

but  he  winked  to  me  not  to  ring  the  bell.  An- 
other lunge  from  Monahan,  another  lunge,  and 
then  Corbett  shot  his  right  hand  across  on  Mon- 
ahan's  jaw  and  knocked  him  stiif.  It  took  a 
minute  to  bring  him  to. 

We  went  back  to  the  dressing-room  and  then 
discovered  what  it  had  cost  us  to  knock  out  the 
gas-house  giant  and  rescue  Corbett's  reputa- 
tion. Two  of  his  knuckles  were  knocked  back 
into  the  middle  of  his  hand.  That  was  the  end 
of  Corbett's  attempting  to  meet  the  "all 
comers,"  with  one  or  two  exceptions,  up  to  the 
time  he  entered  the  ring  with  Sullivan. 

We  then  planned  a  tour  throughout  the 
United  States,  making  a  single  appearance  in 
each  city,  carrying  only  about  eight  people, 
and  recruiting  in  each  place  we  visited  with 
local  boxers.  We  would  go  into  a  town  with 
Corbett,  his  sparring  partner,  and  one  or  two 
others.  We  would  get  all  the  ambitious  boys 
in  the  town  who  wanted  to  fight,  interested, 
and  in  that  way  provide  the  entertainment  nec- 
essary before  Corbett  went  on.  We  paid  the 
boys  from  ten  dollars  to  twenty  dollars  a  bout. 


78  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

The  same  thing  is  done  now  at  Madison  Square 
Garden.  Of  course,  the  moment  the  thing  got 
brutal  in  any  way  we  stopped  it.  That  was 
the  plan  for  our  tour  which  was  to  include  the 
whole  country  and  we  hoped  to  clean  up  not 
only  enough  to  defray  Corbett's  training  ex- 
penses, for  his  battle  with  Sullivan,  but  a  tidy 
sum  besides. 

After  we'd  been  doing  this  about  a  week,  we 
discovered  that  it  would  be  necessary,  in  order 
to  engage  great  local  interest,  and  secure  fine 
receipts,  to  get  somebody  to  stand  before  Cor- 
bett  other  than  his  sparring  partner — ^because 
the  public  is  apt  to  regard  such  things  as  cut- 
and-dried  affairs.  And  as  Corbett's  hands 
were  in  bad  condition,  we  did  not  propose  again 
to  take  any  chances  with  strangers  or  "all 
comers."  So  we  hit  upon  the  idea  of  sending 
Connie  McVey  ahead  of  the  show  a  couple  of 
weeks.  McVey  was  the  man  we  had  discovered 
in  Philadelphia — ^the  man  who  "knew  how  to 
be  knocked  out."  He  was  to  go  to  the  different 
places  we  were  to  play,  "discover"  that  Corbett 
was  to  appear  there,  and  immediately  issue  a 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  79 

challenge  to  fight  him  on  his  arrival.  In  this 
way  Connie  fought  Corbett  all  over  the  United 
States  and  under  different  titles.  In  Hartford 
he  was  known  as  Joe  Nelson,  the  Maine  terror ; 
in  Rochester  he  was  Alex  Conelli,  the  Cana- 
dian giant ;  in  Columbus,  Ohio,  he  fought  Cor- 
bett as  Jim  Durand,  the  mountain  terror  from 
Kentucky.  His  aliases  were  always  made  ap- 
propriate to  the  section  of  the  country  in  which 
he  was  operating.  For  instance,  in  Milwaukee 
he  was  John  Olsen,  the  terror  of  the  lumber 
camps;  in  Butte  City  he  gave  a  battle  that 
created  intense  enthusiasm  under  the  title  of 
the  Walla  Walla  giant.  In  Los  Angeles  Mc- 
Vey  took  on  a  Mexican  alias  that  appealed 
strongly  to  that  portion  of  the  population  that 
had  Spanish  blood  in  its  veins,  and  wanted  to 
see  one  of  their  kind  defeat  the  upstart  from 
the  North.  In  Tucson  Corbett  knocked  Mc- 
Vey  out  in  one  round  as  the  terror  of  Arizona, 
while  in  El  Paso  the  many-titled  man  put  up 
a  very  pretty  match  as  the  Texas  Pet.  In  all 
these  places  Connie  was  received  as  a  world- 
beater. 


80  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

We  would  arrive  in  town  and  find  him  rid- 
ing around  in  an  open  barouche  with  the  mayor. 
The  man  who  had  the  nerve  to  meet  Corbett 
became  the  hero  of  every  community  he  visited. 
For  two  weeks  prior  to  the  coming  of  our  show 
Connie,  under  his  different  aliases,  lived  like 
a  king,  grew  fat  and  prospered.  He  was  wined 
and  dined  by  the  best  men  in  town.  He  had 
presents  made  him.  Needless  to  say,  after 
Corbett  appeared,  Connie  made  tracks  for  the 
next  place  and  with  a  brand-new  alias. 

McVey's  personality  lent  itself  beautifully 
to  our  scheme.  He  was  a  very  big  man,  weigh- 
ing about  two  hundred  and  forty  pounds. 
That  he  looked  like  a  real  champion  was  dem- 
onstrated when  Corbett  visited  Dublin  years 
later,  after  defeating  Charley  JNIitchell.  There 
were  twenty  thousand  Irishmen  at  the  depot 
and  in  the  streets  to  meet  us  on  that  occasion. 
Some  of  them  found  Corbett,  carried  him  on 
their  shoulders  to  his  carriage,  took  the  horses 
out  of  the  rig  and  hauled  it  by  hand  to  the 
Queen's  Hotel  on  O'Connell  Street.  Others 
in  the  mob  found  Connie  McVey  and  in  spite 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  81 

of  his  protests  carried  him  on  their  shoulders 
to  his  carriage,  unliitched  the  horses  and  pulled 
him  up  another  street  to  the  same  hotel.  So 
there  were  two  Corbetts  dragged  through  the 
streets  of  Dublin  that  day! 

In  the  declining  days  of  Corbett's  reputa- 
tion he  was  matched  to  box  twenty  rounds  with 
Tom  Sharkey  at  the  Lexington  Athletic  Club 
in  New  York.  Connie  McVey  was  in  the  cor- 
ner and  when  in  the  eighth  round  Sharkey  had 
Corbett  practically  beaten  and  on  the  verge  of 
a  knock-out,  McVey  jumped  into  the  ring  and 
rushed  between  them  and  so  lost  the  fight  for 
Corbett  by  a  foul.  But  he  saved  his  beloved 
friend  from  the  knock-out.  McVey  was  one  of 
the  most  faithful  creatures  I  ever  knew. 

This  trip  through  the  country  realized  for 
us  about  thirty-five  thousand  dollars.  The 
way  we  went  at  our  training  for  the  Sullivan 
event  must  have  cost  us  ten  thousand  dollars. 
The  rest  of  it  went  in  different  ways.  As  Cor- 
bett was  quite  certain  that  he  was  going  to  beat 
John  L.  money  did  not  count.  That  kind  of 
money  never  sticks  to  your  fingers;  there  are 


B2  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

so  many  ways  to  spend  it.  You  hare  to  keep 
up  your  end,  live  at  the  best  hotels — ^buy  every- 
thing! None  of  the  hangers-on  must  be  al- 
lowed to  spend  a  cent.  Sullivan  had  set  a  so- 
called  scale  of  liberality  that  the  other  fellow 
had  to  live  up  to. 

The  Olympic  Athletic  Club  of  New  Orleans 
had  been  the  highest  bidder  for  the  fight — 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars — and  the  match 
had  been  arranged  to  take  place  in  that  city  on 
September  ninth — the  twenty-five  thousand 
dollars  to  go  to  the  winner.  At  the  same  time 
they  had  arranged  a  pugilistic  carnival  for 
three  days.  On  the  first  night  George  Dickson 
was  to  fight  Jack  Skelly  for  the  bantam  cham- 
pionship and  on  the  second  night  Jack  McAu- 
liff  was  to  fight  Billy  Meyer,  who  was  known 
as  the  Streator  (Illinois)  Cyclone,  for  the  light- 
weight championship.  On  the  final  night  of 
the  contest  Corbett  was  to  fight  Sullivan.  The 
largest  purse  offered  up  to  that  time  was  for 
the  third  bout.  McAuliff,  who  had  never  been 
beaten  by  any  lightweight,  was  almost  as  pop- 
ular in  his  way  as  Sullivan. 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  88 

We  started  to  train  about  the  middle  of  May 
at  Lock  Arbor,  New  Jersey,  just  on  the  edge 
of  Asbury  Park.  Corbett  had  new  ideas  about 
training,  as  well  as  about  other  things  pertain- 
ing to  pugilism.  The  usual  custom  had  been 
for  the  pugilist  to  go  out  somewhere  to  a  road- 
house  with  a  convenient  bar  and  innumerable 
spongers  and  hangers-on.  But  our  man  took 
a  cottage  and  associated  with  none  but  decent 
people.  William  Delaney  was  principal 
trainer.  Also  there  were  sparring  partners, 
wrestling  partners — ^men  with  specialties — for 
Corbett  had  determined  to  learn  every  trick  of 
the  trade.  He  wanted  these  specialists  by  their 
unusual  work  to  bring  out  everything  that  was 
in  him,  prepare  him  for  every  emergency.  You 
see,  you  never  can  tell  exactly  how  your  op- 
ponent is  training.  He  may  have  something 
up  his  sleeve  with  which  to  surprise  you.-  The 
training  quarters  of  the  pugilist  are  managed 
diplomatically — managed  so  as  to  throw  the 
other  fellow  off  his  guard,  if  possible.  Every- 
thing is  done  to  give  him  the  idea  that  you  are 
training  along  simple,  accepted  lines.    When 


84  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

a  big  event  is  to  be  pulled  off,  each  camp  has 
trusted  scouts  hanging  around  the  headquar- 
ters of  the  enemy,  frequenting  the  bars  of  the 
neighborhood,  picking  up  bits  of  gossip  that 
may  prove  available.  The  lightest  word 
dropped  by  a  half -drunken  trainer  is  carefully 
reported  and  weighed  in  the  councils  of  the 
camp  for  what  it  is  worth.  Needless  to  say, 
money  is  freely  paid  for  reliable  information, 
but  this  practise  is  apt  to  prove  a  boomerang 
in  instigating  hangers-on  to  add  to  or  change 
what  they  hear  before  reporting  it.  All  this 
comes  under  what  might  be  called  the  diplo- 
macy of  the  ring  and  is  quite  as  ethical  as  the 
methods  used  in  Wall  Street  or  in  the  cabinets 
of  nations. 

We  did  things  decently  in  our  camp.  We 
discouraged  the  presence  of  thugs  who  usually 
infest  the  training  quarters  of  prize-fighters  on 
Sunday — ^the  "Jimmies"  and  the  "Mickies" 
and  the  "Billies" — the  blatant  hot-air  boys. 
This  is  the  same  class  of  men  that  infests  the 
racing  stables.  They  are  always  looking  for 
points  and  never  getting  the  real  thing  in  in- 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN  85 

side  information,  since  only  the  pugilist's  most 
loyal  adherents  are  permitted  to  know  what  is 
going  on.  The  hanger-on  is  the  foolish  Johnny. 
He  may  be  very  rich  or  very  poor,  but  he's  al- 
ways a  nuisance.  The  pathetic  thing  about  him 
is  that  he  doesn't  aspire  to  be  known  as  the 
friend  of  Corbett  or  of  Sullivan,  but  is  amply 
satisfied  with  being  pointed  out  as  a  friend  of 
Jeffries'  trainer  and  the  like.  The  very  poor 
hanger-on  is  not  so  much  of  a  nuisance  as  the 
very  rich  one.  You  can  make  use  of  him,  pos- 
sibly as  a  messenger  or  a  helper  or  dismiss  him 
with  a  few  drinks.  But  the  other  feUow  always 
wants  to  treat  you  or  do  you  favors.  We  were 
guyed  for  our  swell  way  of  doing  things,  but 
we  didn't  mind.  We  were  determined  to  treat 
the  whole  thing  as  a  business  proposition,  and 
we  did  it. 

Corbett  was  a  true  progressive.  He  intro- 
duced numerous  things  that  had  never  been 
heard  of  before.  Shadow  boxing — or  boxing 
with  your  shadow — ^was  his  invention,  and  he 
used  it  now.  All  the  old  fighters  used  to  do 
was  to  punch  the  bag  and  walk.     Corbett  in- 


B6  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

trbduce'd  pulley  weights,  the  medidne  ball,  and 
all  the  things  we  are  having  now.  lie  was 
not  a  stiiong  man.  Ih  f  afct,  his  strtength  was  all 
manufactured.  Nor  was  he  a  hard  hitter.  But 
he  was  scientific,  and  as  qtiick  as  a  cfat.  He 
always  trippiied  about  on  his  toes — ^i-eady  to  get 
away.  The  other  fellow  used  to  fight  with  all 
the  strength  he  could  get,  but  Corbett  intro- 
duced jabbing.  He  used  his  left  htod.  Up 
to  thai;  time,  no  ptigilisft  evcl*  had  the  free  use 
of  his  left  arm  that  Cbi'bett  had.  This  of  itself 
was  of  immenste  Value. 

Corbett's  backers  frequently  visited  his 
training  quarters.  Phil  I>wyer,  the  famous 
horseman,  was  otie  Of  these  and  he  seemed  to 
be  worried  that  the  fighter  was  reducing  his 
weight  too  much.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was, 
tut  we  had  to  reassure  Dwyer.  So  we  put 
some  bits  of  railroad  iron  in  Corbett's  pockets 
Just  before  he  was  weighed  which  brought  his 
avoirdupois  up  to  the  required  mark.  A  few 
pofunds  one  way  or  the  other  really  didn't  mat- 
ter, but  we  had  to  keep  up  Dwyer's  courage. 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN  87i 

The  better  class  of  people  took  a  great  in- 
terest in  Corbett  because  he  brought  a  certain 
spirit,  a  cleanness  into  the  whole  game  that  they 
had  never  seen  before.  They  say  he  was  like 
John  C.  Heenan  in  this  respect.  He  even 
carried  his  new  methods  into  the  transportation 
end  of  it.  Instead  of  the  usual  trainload  of 
brawling  rowdies  and  cringing  sycophants,  we 
had  a  train  of  our  own  with  a  special  baggage 
car  for  the  whole  distance  from  Asbury  Park 
to  New  Orleans.  Corbett  refused  to  make  the 
trip  at  one  continuous  run.  He  claimed  that 
besides  practising  in  his  car,  it  was  necessary 
to  get  out  once  in  a  while  and  stretch  his  legs 
and  limber  up.  So  we  stopped  two  or  three 
times  en  route  and  he  indulged  in  a  cross-coun- 
try run. 

When  we  reached  New  Orleans  they  were 
betting  five  to  one  against  Corbett.  In  fact, 
some  persons  were  wagering  that  Sullivan 
would  make  our  man  jump  out  of  the  ring. 
I  had  three  thousand  dollars  which  I  had 
brought  down  to  bet  on  Sullivan.    You  see,  if 


88  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

Corbett  won  we  would  have  everything.  But 
there  was  always  the  gambler's  chance  of  his 
not  winning,  which  was  why  I  sought  to  hedge 
on  SuUivan.  I  hung  around  the  town  for 
twenty-four  hours,  trying  to  land  a  bet  at  more 
favorable  odds.  I  didn't  feel  like  putting  up 
three  thousand  dollars  in  order  to  win  six  hun- 
dred or  seven  hundred  dollars.  But  Corbett's 
confidence  inspired  me.  I  never  saw  a  man 
who  was  so  sure  of  himself.  He  knew  his  man, 
morally,  mentally,  physically  and  psychologic- 
ally. He  literally  astounded  me  with  his  talk 
about  Sullivan,  and  I  found  out  afterward 
that  he  was  correct  in  every  detail.  In  fact,  I 
was  so  braced  up  by  this  that  I  walked  into 
the  St.  Charles  Hotel  and  placed  my  money 
at  four  to  one  on  Corbett.  That  was  about 
two  hours  before  the  fight. 

There  never  was  such  an  audience  assembled. 
New  Orleans  was  packed  with  famous  poli- 
ticians, actors  and  business  men.  Priests  and 
other  clergymen  were  there,  disguised  as  lay- 
men, to  see  the  match.  Corbett  spent  the  day 
before  the  fight  in  the   gymnasium  of  the 


COPYRIGHT,   BROWN  BROS. 


Tom  Sharkey 


rtRMIMlON   OF   NOtlMT  COITkN 


Tolin  C.  Heenan 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN  89 

Young"  Men's  Christian  Association  while  Sul- 
livan went  to  the  Athletic  Club. 

iThe  fight  was  to  take  place  in  an  outhouse 
back  of  the  club  building.  Sullivan's  room 
was  on  the  second  floor  of  this  building  and 
ours  on  the  third.  Not  long  before  the  fight, 
Johnson,  Sullivan's  manager,  came  into  our 
room  and  suggested  that  we  toss  for  the  cor- 
ner. Now,  in  this  ring  at  that  time  there  was 
what  was  known  in  New  Orleans  as  the  "lucky 
comer."  Every  pugilist  who  had  sat  in  this 
corner,  with  very  rare  exceptions,  had  won  the 
fight.  Bo  I  went  down  with  Johnson  into 
Sullivan^s  room  to  toss  for  choice  and  I  got 
a  glimpse  of  the  gladiator,  who  was  stretched 
out  on  a  table  being  rubbed  down.  I  saw  fear 
in  his  face.  I  knew  he  was  not  so  confident 
as  he  pretended  to  be.  I  was  only  a  kid  at 
the  time ;  I  don't  think  I  weighed  over  a  hun- 
dred and  twenty-six  pounds.  But  I  went  in 
and  we  tossed  the  penny. 

"Heads!"  I  cried. 

It  came  heads.  And  here  is  where  I  put 
fear  into  Mr.  Sullivan. 


90  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

"What  corner  do  you  take?"  said  Johnson. 

"Take,  damn  you  I"  I  shouted,  "I  take  the 
lucky  corner!" 

Then  I  tiu-ned  and  rushed  up-stairs,  shriek- 
ing at  the  top  of  my  voice,  "We've  got  the 
lucky  corner  1    We've  got  the  lucky  corner  1" 

They  thought  I  was  mad  with  excitement, 
but  there  was  a  method  in  it.  I  did  it  purely 
for  psychological  purposes. 

Now  Sullivan  knew  Corbett's  superstition 
about  not  wanting  to  go  into  the  ring  first, 
and  they  put  up  a  job  on  him.  Remember 
that  most  pugilists  are  superstitious,  and  in 
their  extremely  nervous  and  sensitive  condi- 
tion just  before  a  match  are  apt  to  give  undue 
weight  to  the  merest  trifle  that  might  augur 
against  them.  I  could  tell  many  stories  of 
men  being  unnerved  in  this  way  and  losing 
fights,  but  all  this  is  involved  in  what  might 
be  called  "ring  psychology"  or  "ring  fear." 
They  brought  word  to  us  that  Sullivan  was 
in  the  ring,  so  we  started  to  walk  down-stairs. 
To  get  to  the  outhouse  we  had  to  pass  through 
a  lane  of  people.    When  we  had  got  where  I 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  ^1 

could  see  the  ring  I  said,  "They've  lied  to  us 
— Sullivan's  fooling  us  I"  then  I  grabbed  Cor- 
bett  and  forced  him  back  into  the  mob,*and 
turning  to  Sullivan,  who  was  following  close 
on  our  heels,  cried,  "You're  the  champion! 
It's  your  place  to  enter  the  ring  first!" — and 
we  made  the  big  fellow  do  it. 

Everybody  expected  to  see  Corbett  trem- 
bling in  his  corner,  for  Sullivan  was  trying 
his  glower  trick  again.  But  instead  of  seeing 
a  man  already  half  licked  with  fright  by  his 
hypnotic  scowl,  he  saw  one  as  cheery  and  bright 
as  a  grasshopper  in  an  August  wheat-field. 

I  had  seen  only  one  other  fight  in  my  life 
and  I  was  sick  with  nervousness  over  this  one. 
I  had  a  habit  of  crumpling  up  my  handker- 
chief and  passing  it  from  one  palm  to  the  other, 
but  this  time  I  actually  ate  it  up.  Primrose, 
the  great  minstrel,  was  in  a  box  back  of  me. 
He  had  a  palmleaf  fan  in  his  hand  and  such 
was  my  agitation  that  I  took  it  from  him, 
chewed  it  up  and  swallowed  it.  Cold  sweat 
stood  out  all  over  me,  and  so  dry  was  my  mouth 
that  I  could  not  speak  except  after  two  or 


92  THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

three  efforts.  Nor  was  this  condition  due  in 
the  smallest  degree  to  the  money  I'd  staked 
on  the  fight.  I  had  won  and  lost  a  greater 
amount  many  times  on  a  single  turn  of  a  card. 
But  Corbett's  reputation  was  at  stake.  Our 
fortunes  were  identical,  so  to  speak — ^we  would 
rise  or  fall  together  by  this  event.  But  be- 
yond it  all  was  the  wonderful  pride  of  having 
discovered  a  champion.  I  hung  suspended  as 
it  were  between  two  great  emotions — the  joy 
of  a  mighty  triumph  and  the  grief  of  a  great 
despair. 

In  preparation  for  this  fight  I  had  availed 
of  every  device  of  ring  generalship.  But  I 
went  the  old-timers  one  better.  I  worked  the 
psychological  end  of  it  in  a  way  and  to  an 
extent  they'd  never  dreamed  of.  I  knew  that 
Sullivan's  most  vulnerable  point  was  the  psy- 
chological— the  superstitious  side  of  him.  In 
a  play  called  Honest  Hearts  and  Willing 
Hands y  by  Duncan  B.  Harrison,  Sullivan  had 
shown  that  a  pugilist  could  make  money  by 
acting  as  well  as  by  fighting.  Now,  long  be- 
fore the  present  fight  was  arranged  for,  I  had 


THE    FIGHTING    MAX  93 

discovered  that  Corbett  was  not  only  a  first- 
class  pugilist,  but  a  fairly  good  actor.  So  I 
had  Charles  T.  Vincent  write  a  play  for  him 
and  we  called  it  Gentleman  Jack.  During  our 
tour  in  the  summer  with  After  Dark,  and  even 
when  he  had  reached  his  training  quarters, 
Corbett  devoted  hi^  spare  moments  to  rehears- 
ing this  play.  We  had  it  all  ready  to  clap 
on  the  boards  the  minute  the  gong  sounded  in 
New  Orleans  in  favor  of  the  Calif ornian. 

So  far,  so  good.  And  now,  here  is  where 
the  psychological  part  of  it  comes  in!  Three 
days  before  the  fight  was  to  take  place,  I  billed 
Corbett  all  over  New  York  City  as  "The 
Champion  of  the  World  1"  I  even  booked 
him  and  billed  him  in  flaring  lithographs  at 
Birmingham  and  Atlanta,  "James  J.  Cor- 
bett, Champion  of  the  World,  to  Appear, 
IN  'Gentleman  Jack'!"  This  was  extremely 
nervy,  but  I  did  it  for  the  effect  I  knew  it 
would  have  on  Sullivan  when  he  saw  these 
posters. 

To  return  to  the  match.  Sullivan  started  in 
with  a  right-hand  punch  and  Corbett  ducked 


94  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

and  side-stepped.  Then  the  crowd  began  to 
yell  at  the  Calif ornian,  *'Don't  run  away! 
Stand  up  and  fight!"  And  Corbett  did  the 
coolest  thing  I  have  ever  seen  done  anywhere. 
He  paused  in  the  center  of  the  ring,  held  up 
his  hands  to  that  enormous  audience  and  said 
almost  patronizingly,  "Wait  a  minute — wait 
a  minute!" 

Sullivan  looked  at  him,  paralyzed  by  the  ef- 
frontery of  the  act.  And  then,  with  a  non- 
chalance that  was  nothing  short  of  pure  impu- 
dence, Corbett  repeated,  "Wait  a  minute — it 
will  be  all  right!" 

Corbett  then  began  to  dance  around  the 
ring,  using  tactics  the  crowd  had  never  seen 
before.  At  the  end  of  the  second  round  Cor- 
bett came  to  his  corner  and  said  to  Delaney, 
"There's  no  use  staying  away  from  this  fellow. 
I  can  finish  him  in  another  round !" 

I  said,  "For  God's  sake,  Jim,  don't! — don't! 
— don't  take  any  chances!  Remember  Gentle^ 
man  Jack!" 

At  the  very  beginning  of  the  third  round 
Corbett  cut  loose  in  earnest  and  in  less  time 


THE   FIGHTING  MAN  95 

than  it  takes  to  tell  it  made  Sullivan  look  as 
if  he'd  been  through  a  sausage  mill.  From 
then  on  to  the  end  of  the  match  there  was  noth- 
ing to  it  but  the  shouting,  and  that  was  not  so 
uproarious  as  it  might  have  been,  seeing  that 
most  of  the  money  had  been  bet  on  Sullivan  I 
That  was  the  end  of  the  professional  career 
of  the  so-called  invincible  John  L.  It  had 
taken  Corbett  twenty-one  rounds  to  do  the  job. 
He  could  have  done  it  in  three.  But  he  fought 
scientifically,  played  a  safe  game  from  start 
to  finish,  and  followed  the  advice  from  his  cor- 
ner and  took  no  chances! 

When  Corbett  had  gone  to  his  room  after 
the  fight,  a  red  head  appeared  over  the  transom 
and  a  shrieky  voice  cried,  "Here's  a  telegram 
for  you." 

Jim  hated  that  particular  head  and  face,  and 
he  shouted  with  some  profanity,  "You  get 
away  from  there!"  which  it  did  instanter.  It 
was  the  head  of  Robert  Fitzsimmons,  who  aft- 
erward beat  Corbett  for.  the  championship — ^ 
the  very  first  one  to  appear  after  the  Sullivan 
fight. 


m         THEi  FIGHTING  MAN 

Corbett  became  a  popular  idol  at  once.  He 
was  Irish  and  a  Catholic,  and  the  Irish-Ameri- 
cans followed  pugilism  more  closely  at  that 
time  than  any  other  race  in  the  United  States. 
Most  of  the  fighters  came  from  Ireland  or 
England,  and  the  better  class  of  Irish  people 
who  had  been  shocked  by  many  of  the  esca- 
pades of  John  L.  welcomed  the  coming  of  a 
good-looking  young  type  of  Irishman.  These 
people  hoped  that  for  the  sake  of  the  Green 
Isle,  now  that  he  had  won  the  championship 
from  Sullivan,  Corbett  could  act  decently  and 
be  a  gentleman  so  far  as  it  was  possible  for  a 
pugilist  to  be. 

Corbett  had  been  known  to -Calif  omians  as 
"Gentleman  Jim,"  a  nickname  which  now 
spread  all  over  the  country.  He  was  also 
called  "Pompadour  Jim,"  because  he  wore  his 
hair  brushed  back  like  an  Indian. 

The  Sullivan  period  had  always  appealed 
to  saloon  and  dive  keepers  and  the  lower  class 
of  humanity  generally.  The  decent  element 
in  the  country,  who  believed  that  boxing  should 
be  taught  to  young  boys  and  that  it  should 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  97 

be  classed  as  legitimate  along  with  rowing, 
baseball  and  the  like,  welcomed  the  coming  of 
Corbett.  Even  before  the  match  he  had  been 
popular  with  decent  people.  He  was  clean, 
good-looking,  bright,  he  did  not  drink  or 
smoke  much,  was  fairly  well  educated,  and 
could  hold  his  own  in  conversation  on  any  or- 
dinary topic.  He  was  lovable.  Women  liked 
him.  Everybody  from  a  minister  to  a  boot- 
black wanted  to  meet  him.  He  had  the  glad 
hand,  the  "con,"  better  than  anybody  I  knew. 
As  we  traveled  thousands  of  people  used  to 
meet  Corbett  wherever  we  went.  They  sur- 
rounded the  hotels  at  which  he  stopped.  Busi- 
ness in  any  public  house  that  entertained  him 
would  jump  from  three  hundred  to  a  thousand 
per  cent.  If  we  happened  to  lay  over  at  a 
railroad  junction  for  an  hour  or  so  in  order 
to  make  connections,  the  news  would  spread 
like  the  wind  and  first  thing  you  knew  there 
would  be  a  thousand  people  standing  around, 
dead  still,  looking  at  the  champion.  Politicians 
were  always  eager  to  meet  Corbett.  Once 
when  William   McKinley   was   governor   of 


98  THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

Ohio  he  and  Corbett  had  a  long  chat  in  a  par- 
lor of  the  principal  hotel  in  Columbus.  As 
they  walked  down  the  steps  into  the  office,  a 
drummer  standing  near  said,  "There  goes  Cor- 
bett!" .Instantly  there  was  a  furor,  and  an- 
other drummer  standing  near  asked,  "Who  is 
the  little  man  with  Sim?" 

If  Corbett  had  availed  of  his  chances  at  this 
time  he  would  have  become  a  very  rich  man. 
Money  came  to  us  from  all  directions.  Apart 
from  the  profits  of  the  show,  newspapers  and 
magazines  paid  him  for  signed  articles. 
Shortly  after  the  fight  we  happened  to  be  in 
Toledo  and  one  of  the  leading  glass  factories 
there  figured  out  that  it  would  be  a  great 
scheme  to  have  a  paper-weight  made  of  Cor- 
bett's  right  hand  and  advertise  it  as  the  "hand 
that  knocked  Sullivan  out."  One  of  the  con- 
cern's drummers  interviewed  Corbett  and 
swelled  him  up  a  bit  with  hot  air,  and  he  agreed 
to  let  them  make  the  plaster  cast  of  his  hand 
— for  nothing.  But  I  came  into  the  room, 
found  the  plaster  on  his  arm,  asked  him  what 
he  was  doing  and  when  he  told  me  I  broke 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN  99 

the  thing  oiF.  Then  we  renewed  negotiations 
and  the  glass  people  paid  one  thousand  dollars 
for  the  privilege.  Clothes,  cigars  and  other 
articles  were  named  after  him.  He  would  um- 
pire a  haseball  game  and  get  a  thousand  dol- 
lars. Later  he  made  a  tour  of  the  country, 
playing  first  base  with  professional  teams  in 
regular  minor  league  championship  games, 
and  got  from  five  hundred  dollars  to  one  thou- 
sand dollars  for  each  appearance.  And  it  is 
a  certain  fact  that  throughout  his  entire  tour 
as  first  baseman,  with  different  teams,  Corbett 
did  not  make  more  than  three  errors.  He  could 
not  bat,  but  every  time  he  played  he  would 
manage  to  get  on  the  right  side  of  the  oppos- 
ing pitcher  and  persuade  him  to  let  him  make 
a  couple  of  hits. 

I  should  judge  that  during  the  twelvemonth 
following  the  event  at  New  Orleans  Corbett 
and  I  cleaned  up  at  least  three  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars.  We  got  one  thousand  dollars  to 
appear  in  New  Orleans  the  night  after  the 
fight.  Our  share  in  Birmingham  was  one  thou- 
sand two  hundred  dollars,  and  in  Atlanta,  one 


100        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

thousand  five  hundred  dollars.  Madison 
Square  Garden  on  Saturday  night  yielded  us 
six  thousand  six  hundred  dollars,  and  in  Bos- 
ton we  got  five  thousand  dollars  for  a  Monday 
night.  We  took  one  thousand  five  hundred 
dollars  from  Providence  and  three  thousand 
two  hundred  dollars  from  Philadelphia  for 
one-night  appearances.  These  instances  only 
go  to  show  the  way  money  flowed  in  on  us. 
After  the  fight  Corbett  appeared  gratis  at  the 
benefit  given  to  Sullivan  at  Madison  Square 
Garden,  from  which  the  ex-champion  received 
thirteen  thousand  five  hundred  dollars. 


IV 

The  defeat  of  Sullivan,  even  more  than  the 
victory  of  Corbett,  gave  a  new  interest  to  pu- 
gilism the  world  over.  The  hypnotic  spell 
which  the  Boston  giant  had  cast  over  the  peo- 
ple had  been  broken.  The  Goliath  in  him  had 
been  slain  and,  as  usual,  the  David  who  did 
the  job  was  little  more  than  a  stripling  from 
California.  And  the  mourners  went  about  the 
streets;  Sullivan  was  not  invincible,  after  all. 
The  man  who  could  scare  his  opponents  to 
death  by  scowling  at  them  was  not  a  god,  but 
a  creature  of  flesh  and  blood,  subject  to  the 
things  that  flesh  and  blood  are  heir  to.  And 
now  that  the  big  dog  had  been  licked,  the  other 
dogs  began  to  come  out  of  their  holes  and 
growl  at  him.  If  Corbett  had  remained  cham- 
pion as  long  as  Sullivan  did,  there  would  prob- 
ably have  grown  up  in  him  the  same  hypnotic 
power  over  the  aspirants  of  the  pugilistic  world 

101 


102        THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

that  John  L.  had  so  effectively  exerted.  We 
are  too  apt  to  think  that  these  men  come  only 
"one  in  a  box" — ^that  they  never  had  and  never 
tvill  have  an  equal.  But  those  on  the  inside 
know  that  no  man  deteriorates  more  rapidly 
than  the  prize-fighter.  He  has  many  things 
to  drag  him  down  and  small  moral  stamina 
with  which  to  resist.  The  man  who  was  in- 
vincible a  few  months  ago  might  not  to-day 
defeat  a  third-rate  fighter.  That's  why  the 
public  loses  so  much  money  on  its  old  favorites ; 
it  doesn't  know  conditions. 

The  New  Orleans  event,  like  all  others, 
brought  in  its  wake  the  usual  line  of  dissen- 
sion and  rows.  Few  persons  gave  Corbett  un- 
qualified credit  for  his  work.  The  Sullivan 
public  claimed  that  the  big  fellow  had  been 
beaten  because  he  was  too  old  to  fight;  that 
he  had  "gone  to  the  well"  once  too  often. 
Sporting  writers  argued  that  anybody  could 
have  done  the  job  twice  as  quickly  as  Corbett 
did  it — Fitzsimmons,  Slavin,  Jim  Hall,  Peter 
Jackson — anybody,  in  fact  I 

Just  then  a  man  came  from  Ireland  who  had 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        103 

a  terrible  punch.  His  name  was  Peter  Maher, 
and  he  became  troublesome  to  Corbett  at  once. 
Fitzsimmons,  too,  was  coming  to  the  front. 
Even  at  this  early  period,  Corbett  felt  a  fear 
of  Fitzsimmons.  He  never  had  any  use  for 
a  battle  with  him.  He  even  went  out  of  his 
way  to  avoid  him.  In  fact,  Corbett  did  not 
want  to  meet  anybody  with  a  punch.  A  clever 
boxer  takes  a  chance  when  he  goes  into  the 
ring  with  any  man  who  has  the  power  to  de- 
liver a  knock-out  blow,  for  cleverness  in  box- 
ing has  its  limits.  The  scientific  man  always 
has  a  fear  of  going  into  the  ring  with  a  wild 
boxer,  because  there's  no  telling  when  such  a 
fellow  may,  with  his  tremendous  strength, 
break  through  his  opponent's  guard — no  mat- 
ter how  skilful  the  latter  may  be — and  land 
a  punch  that  will  put  him  out  of  business. 
Even  Mike  Monahan,  the  gas-house  giant 
whom  Corbett  boxed  in  Philadelphia,  was  dan- 
gerous, because  he  might  just  close  his  eyes 
and  go  in,  bing,  bang,  and  hit  you  on  the  jaw. 
Now,  Robert  Fitzsimmons  was  that  kind  of 
a  man.     Jle  would  take  one  wild  chance  to 


104        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

knock  the  other  fellow  out.  He  always  had 
sense  enough  to  get  to  his  feet  and  fool  around 
and  finally  come  across,  even  in  a  haphazard 
way,  with  what  later  became  famous  as  his 
"solar  plexus"  blow, 

Robert  Fitzsimmons  was  the  most  remark- 
able man  of  my  time.  He  was  ungainly  in 
the  last  degree,  resembling  more  than  any 
other  man  I  know  the  animal  that  has  made 
Australia  famous.  He  had  pipe-stem  legs,  the 
waist  and  shoulders  of  a  Hercules,  and  the 
neck  and  head  of  a  kangaroo.  He  was  the 
most  remarkable  boxer — the  most  remarkable 
fighter — of  our  time.  He  had  strength,  fight- 
ing sense  and  terrific  power  in  his  left  arm  as 
well  as  in  his  right.  Corbett,  being  a  careful 
observer  of  all  things  pertaining  to  pugilism, 
was  well  aware  of  Fitzsimmons'  quality,  and 
was  careful  to  side-step  the  issue  of  a  contest 
with  him  whenever  it  was  raised. 

Just  then  Charley  Mitchell,  who  by  this  time 
had  lost  control  of  Slavin,  came  to  America 
with  Jun  Hall,  of  Australia,  and  Squire 
Abingdon  Baird.    Baird  was  a  typical  Eng- 


Bob  Armstrong  and  Bob  Fitzsimmons 


Kid  McCoy 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        105 

lish  sporting  squire.  He  had  all  kinds  of 
money  and  came  to  New  York  for  the  pur- 
pose of  bringing  about  a  match  between  Jim 
Hall  and  Fitzsimmons.  This  match  was  made. 
At  the  same  time  Mitchell  was  anxious  to  fight 
Corbett  and  he  got  his  man  Baird  to  go  down 
to  the  World  office  and  put  fifty  one-thousand- 
dollar  bills  on  the  table  for  a  match  with  the 
new  champion.  I  found  out  that  he  was  go- 
ing to  do  this,  and  with  the  assistance  of  Le- 
ander  Richardson,  I  scoured  the  city  and  raised 
an  equal  amount.  When  QBaird  put  his  money 
down  on  the  table,  which  was  only  intended 
as  a  bluff,  I  slammed  fifty  thousand  dollars 
down  on  top  of  it  and  said,  "The  match  is 
made !" 

Mitchell,  seeing  Baird's  money  covered,  but 
not  wanting  it  to  go  that  way,  made  so  many 
impossible  conditions  that  finally  the  side  bet 
was  cut  down  to  five  thousand  dollars. 

Just  a  word  about  Baird  in  passing.  It 
was  said  that  that  gentleman  had  on  his  per- 
son when  he  came  to  America  fifty  thousand 
pounds.      He    went    to    New    Orleans    with 


106        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

Mitchell  and  Hall.  Hall  fought  Fitzsimmons. 
Fitzsimmons  knocked  Hall  out  in  four  rounds, 
and  a  week  later  Squire  Baird  was  found  dead 
in  a  back  room  of  the  St.  Charles  Hotel  with- 
out a  cent  in  his  pocket ! 

After  the  Hall-Fitzsimmons  event  we  ar- 
ranged a  match  between  Corbett  and  Mitchell 
which  was  to  take  place  in  Jacksonville,  Flor- 
ida. The  purse  was  twenty-five  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  was  offered  by  the  leading  citizens 
of  Jacksonville  as  an  inducement  for  us  to  go 
to  that  city.  Corbett  went  to  !Mayport  to  train 
and  Mitchell  to  St.  Augustine.  There  was  no 
law  on  the  statute  books  of  Florida  that  pro- 
hibited a  boxing  contest,  but  Governor  Mitch- 
ell decided  that  there  should  be  no  bout  in  that 
state.  We  fought  the  governor's  decree  in  the 
Supreme  Court,  which  decided  that  we  were 
right  and  that  the  chief  executive  could  not 
stop  us.  Meantime  a  rumor  was  started  that 
we  were  going  to  hold  the  match  just  over  the 
state  line  in  Georgia.  Then  the  governor  of 
Georgia  got  busy  and  ordered  out  a  thousand 
militiamen  to  patrol  the  border  and  not  let 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        107 

us  in  under  any  circumstances.  Next,  Gover- 
nor Mitchell  ordered  his  "mountain  crackers" 
from  all  parts  of  Florida  to  Jacksonville  to 
suppress  the  small  bunch  of  terrible  pugilists 
that  had  come  on  from  New  York. 

The  evening  before  the  fight  the  Supreme 
Court  granted  an  injunction  restraining  the 
governor  from  interfering  with  us.  And 
strange  to  say,  the  first  people  who  paid  for 
their  tickets  to  see  the  fight  were  the  mem- 
bers of  the  militia  who  had  been  ordered  to 
stop  it.  There  was  no  law,  no  police  to  pro- 
tect us  in  the  arena,  so  we  had  to  protect  our- 
selves. Right  back  of  Mitchell's  corner,  armed 
to  the  teeth  and  prepared  for  any  action  that 
might  come  up,  were  Bat  Masterson  and  a 
man  named  Converse,  who  had  been  brought 
from  Colorado  to  protect  the  interests  of  the 
Cockney.  Back  of  our  corner  was  a  similar 
number  of  men  who  had  been  imported  from 
New  York  City  with  the  idea  that  Mitchell 
and  Corbett  were  going  to  shoot  up  the  place. 
Each  man's  second  carried  a  six-shooter,  but 
there  was  no  more  occasion  for  all  this  arma- 


108        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

ment  than  there  is  for  a  policeman  in  a  kinder- 
garten. 

The  fight  was  very  short;  in  fact,  the  audi- 
ence did  not  have  time  to  get  seated.  Mitchell 
never  had  any  right  to  go  into  the  ring.  I 
doubt  if  he  weighed  over  one  hundred  and  sixty 
pounds,  while  Corbett  weighed  about  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty-five.  Apart  from  the  purse 
of  twenty-five  thousand  dollars,  there  was  a 
side  bet  of  ten  thousand  dollars — half  of  which 
had  been  put  up  by  poor  Baird,  who  was  now 
dead.  Mitchell  could  easily  have  demanded 
that  the  entire  thing  be  split.  In  fact,  we  be- 
lieved that  he  would.  Thousands  of  dollars 
were  bet  that  he  would  never  go  into  the  ring, 
and  one  of  the  greatest  surprises  of  my  life 
was  when  I  saw  this  natty  little  Englishman, 
with  his  head  stuck  up  in  the  air,  wending  his 
way  to  his  comer. 

The  referee  was  honest  John  Kelley,  and  in 
our  comer  was  Delaney,  who  had  always  sec- 
onded Corbett,  a  man  named  John  Donald- 
son, and  Jack  Dempsey,  the  famous  light- 
weight, who  at  that  time  was  half  mad  and  who 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        109 

had  been  taken  into  Corbett's  training  camp 
more  out  of  charity  than  anything  else.  But 
Dempsey  happened  to  play  a  very  important 
part  before  the  event  was  finished. 

The  battle  started.  Mitchell,  as  certain  as 
a  little  game  cock,  walked  up  to  Corbett  and 
struck  the  first  blow.  Corbett  returned  vi- 
ciously. He  took  no  chance,  as  it  was  always 
his  rule  to  do  nothing  in  the  first  round  but 
size  up  the  enemy's  tactics  and  get  rid  of  his 
ring  fear.  The  second  round  Corbett  went  at 
Mitchell  viciously  and  knocked  him  down. 
But  no  sooner  was  the  Englishman  on  the 
ground  than  he  began  uttering  disgusting  and 
awful  things  about  Corbett,  with  the  idea  of 
making  "Pompadour  Jim"  lose  his  head.  Cor- 
bett grew  white  with  rage.  On  the  count  of 
nine,  Mitchell  was  on  his  feet.  Corbett  landed 
on  him  and  Mitchell  promptly  went  down  with 
a  blow  which  practically  lost  him  the  fight. 
Corbett,  stung  to  the  point  of  madness  by  his 
opponent's  vile  epithets,  lost  his  head,  and  it 
was  evident  to  all  that  unless  something  were 
done  he  would  strike  or  kick  the  prostrate  man 


110        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

and  lose  by  a  foul.  At  this  moment,  to  the 
amazement  of  us  all,  crazy  Jack  Dempsey 
leaped  over  the  ropes  and  ran  over  to  Corbett 
and  actually  slapped  him  in  the  face.  This 
brought  the  "Pompadour"  to  his  senses. 

If  the  referee  had  performed  his  duty  prop- 
erly, the  mere  fact  of  Dempsey  having  jumped 
into  the  ring  would  have  lost  us  the  battle,  but 
he  overlooked  it.  We  received  thirty-five  thou- 
sand dollars  for  this  bout. 

Not  long  after  this  fight  we  headed  for  Eng- 
land. I  went  over  about  four  weeks  in  ad- 
vance and  arranged  with  Sir  Augustus  Harris 
for  Corbett's  appearance  at  the  Drury  Lane 
Theater  in  Gentleman  Jack,  Punch  had  a  big 
story  about  Harris  taking  Garrick's  bust  off 
the  pedestal  at  the  venerable  playhouse  and 
putting  Corbett's  in  its  place.  The  claim  of 
a  pugilist  being  an  actor  was  a  joke,  but  the 
idea  of  his  appearing  at  Drury  Lane  was  pre- 
posterous. Sir  Augustus  Harris  began  to 
weaken  under  the  attacks  by  the  press,  but  I 
had  paid  him  a  thousand  pounds  in  advance 
as  an  evidence  of  good  faith,  and  it  was  im- 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        111 

possible  for  him  to  break  his  contract.  How- 
ever, the  day  before  the  opening,  he  ran  away 
to  Belgium,  afraid  to  face  the  consequences 
on  the  first  night. 

As  I  had  had  a  lot  of  experience  in  stage 
direction  and  was  myself  playing  Gentleman 
Jack's  father  in  the  piece,  I  planned  a  little 
surprise  for  the  first-night  audience.  I  ar- 
ranged to  give  the  English  public  a  view  of 
an  American  athletic  club  on  the  night  of  a 
sparring  contest.  Over  there  they  have  noth- 
ing but  the  National  Sporting  Club,  where 
they  pull  off  their  matches — a  little  building 
just  across  from  Co  vent  Garden  with  a  seat- 
ing capacity  of  about  four  hundred,  and  it  is 
quite  a  task  to  get  a  seat  or  to  be  one  of  the 
four  hundred.  This  club  was  fathered  by  the 
Earl  of  Lonsdale.  It  had  been  the  habit  of 
the  National  Sporting  Club  up  to  that  time 
to  treat  pugilists  like  dogs.  Fighting  gentle- 
men had  to  go  in  and  out  the  back  way,  while 
the  gentlemen  who  promoted  and  bet  on  the 
fight  went  in  the  front  way.  They  naturally 
expected  to  treat  Corbett  in  the  same  manner. 


112        THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

but  I  took  a  stand  against  this  attitude  at  once. 
When  Corbett  arrived  they  invited  him  in  the 
usual  way  to  come  for  a  bout,  and  he  replied 
that  he  vras  not  in  the  habit  of  going  to  clubs 
unless  he  went  there  as  a  guest.  The  English- 
men treated  this  ultimatum  in  a  very  upstage 
manner,  and  Corbett  practically  told  them  all 
to  go  to  the  devil. 

As  I  said  before,  Corbett  had  worked  in  the 
Bank  of  Nevada,  which  was  practically  con- 
trolled by  John  W.  Mackay.  Mackay's  son, 
Clarence,  was  very  proud  of  him,  and  when 
the  champion  arrived  he  and  Lord  Hay  took 
him  away  from  the  sporting  club  and  made  a 
lion  of  him. 

When  I  began  to  prepare  the  stage  at  Drury 
Lane  for  the  production  of  Gentleman  Jack 
I  brought  in  a  lot  of  carpenters  and  had  cir- 
cus seats  built  on  the  enormous  stage  for  about 
one  thousand  people.  Then  I  engaged  sixty 
regular  "supers,"  placed  them  around  on  these 
seats  and  started  in  to  rehearse  them.  Arthur 
Collins,  who  was  then  stage  manager  and  who 
is  now  producer  and  general  director  of  all  the 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        US 

Dniry  Lane  plays,  came  in  during  rehearsal, 
and  seeing  but  sixty  "supers"  sparsely  scat- 
tered about  on  the  seats,  said,  "What  are  you 
going  to  do  for  the  rest  of  your  people?" 

"Leave  that  to  me,"  said  L 

"Good,"  said  he,  and  put  on  his  hat  and  went 
home. 

Then  I  circulated  all  over  town  a  ticket  bear- 
ing this  inscription:  "This  Will  Admit  You 
Feee  to  the  Drury  Lane  Theater,  at  the 
Stage  Door,  at  Ten  Minutes  After  Ten 
Each  Evening,  in  Time  to  See  the  Spar- 
ring Contest  Between  J.  J.  Corbett  and 
Professor  J.  J.  Donaldson." 

I  sent  out  about  ten  thousand  of  these  for 
the  first  night,  and  when  the  time  came  they 
had  to  order  out  Scotland  Yard  to  keep  the 
people  away  from  the  stage  door.  Collins 
came  rushing  to  me  and  exclaimed,  "What  are 
you  going  to  do  with  the  mob  out  there?" 

"Just  you  wait  and  see,"  said  I. 

"All  right,"  said  he,  and  went  about  his 
business. 

Then  with  Connie  McVey  and  two  other  of 


114        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

our  heavy  men  I  went  to  the  stage  door  and 
we  passed  in  about  one  thousand  people  and 
told  them  to  occupy  seats  on  the  stage.  Then 
I  jumped  into  the  center  of  the  ring  behind  the 
great  curtain,  told  all  the  people  what  was 
going  to  happen  and  what  they  were  expected 
to  do.  Every  time  my  hand  went  up — I  was 
to  be  referee  of  the  fight,  remember — they  were 
to  yell.  When  it  came  down,  they  were  to 
stop.  They  quickly  "caught  on"  and  it  was 
a  wonderful  success,  so  wonderful  that  Cle- 
ment Scott  the  next  day  in  the  Daily  Tele- 
graph devoted  a  whole  column  to  a  description 
of  this  particular  scene,  claiming  that  not  even 
the  big  mob  scene  in  the  performance  of  Julius 
Caesar,  which  had  just  been  given  in  London, 
had  equaled  it. 

But  almost  immediately  the  critics,  having 
found  out  how  simply  the  "great  scene"  was 
accomplished,  came  out  and  gave  Scott  the 
laugh. 

Corbett  awakened  me  at  five  o'clock  the  next 
morning  with  the  newspaper  criticisms  and  we- 
ell  thought  we  would  nm  a  year.    But  it  hap- 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        115 

pened  to  us  as  it  has  happened  to  many  other 
Americans  who  have  gone  to  London  and  ap- 
parently made  a  great  hit.  The  public  gave 
us  a  wide  berth;  we  did  no  business;  and  at 
the  end  of  six  weeks  closed  at  the  Drury  Lane 
about  fifteen  hundred  pounds  to  the  bad.  I 
was  anxious  to  see  the  country,  however,  and 
persuaded  Corbett  that  it  would  be  a  bad 
scheme  to  go  back  to  America  without  making 
our  proposed  tour.  So  we  played  all  of  the 
large  cities  of  Great  Britain,  with  the  follow- 
ing results:  In  Edinburgh  we  took  in  eight 
hundred  pounds  in  eight  performances;  in 
Glasgow,  four  hundred  pounds  in  eight  per- 
formances; in  Newcastle,  about  three  hundred 
pounds ;  and  in  Leeds,  two  hundred ;  in  Liver- 
pool, eight  hundred  pounds,  the  best  on  our 
trip;  Islington,  four  hundred  pounds;  Man- 
chester, four  hundred  pounds — and  so  on.  In 
Birmingham,  which  was  supposed  to  be  the 
home  of  all  fighters,  we  played  to  about  eight 
hundred  pounds  for  eight  performances. 

The  falling  off  of  receipts  in  Birmingham 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  on  the  first  day  of 


116        THE    FIGHTING   MxlN 

our  visit  there,  which  happened  to  be  the 
Fourth  of  July,  Corbett  was  going  down  the 
main  street  with  one  of  the  ladies  of  the  com- 
pany who  wore  an  American  flag  in  her  coat. 
A  fellow  insulted  the  woman  and  Corbett  hit 
him  on  the  jaw,  which  created  a  lot  of  talk. 
Another  thing  was,  they  wanted  to  entertain 
Corbett,.  and  their  idea  was  to  take  him  to  a 
rat  pit  and  have  a  champion  bulldog  kill  a 
thousand  rats  in  a  thousand  seconds.  Corbett 
was  disgusted  and  horrified  at  the  idea  and 
would  not  go,  and  that  settled  him  in  Birming- 
ham! 

In  England,  Ireland  and  Scotland  Corbett 
was  regarded  exactly  as  he  was  in  the  United 
States.  He  was  looked  upon  as  a  curiosity. 
The  people  would  stop  and  stare  at  him,  but 
they  would  not  pay  any  money  to  go  into  the 
theater  and  see  him  act.  We  lost  on  the  Brit- 
ish tour  five  thousand  pounds,  but  we  went 
right  through  with  it — the  tour,  not  the  money. 
Beyond  giving  up  their  money  to  see  a  pu- 
gilist act,  which  they  did  not  believe  in,  the 
English  people  were  very  kind  to  Corbett. 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN        1191 

This  was  due  no  less  perhaps  to  a  certain  hos- 
tility they  felt  toward  their  own  defeated  war- 
rior than  to  the  exceeding  wholesomeness  of 
the  American  champion.  They  didn't  resent 
Mitchell  so  much  because  he  had  been  beaten 
at  Jacksonville,  but  because  of  certain  per- 
formances of  his  which  were  deemed  outre, 
even  in  a  prize-fighter.  He  had  beaten  a  po- 
liceman in  Piccadilly  once  and  served  time  for 
doing  it.  In  fact,  the  decent  people  over  there 
regarded  Corbett  as  a  great  relief  after  men 
like  John  L.  and  their  own  "Charley." 

After  we  got  through  with  England,  we 
went  to  Paris,  where  Corbett  appeared  at  the 
Folies  Bergere  for  ten  days.  We  cleaned  up 
ten  thousand  dollars  in  the  gay  city,  which 
made  up  part  of  the  losses  we  had  accumulated 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel. 

In  Ireland  Corbett's  uncle,  the  Beverend 
John  Corbett,  had  been  one  of  the  fighting  men 
of  the  Land  League.  I  met  him  in  London 
— a  plain,  modest  Irish  priest.  His  parish  was 
in  Tuam,  County  Galway,  on  the  west  coast 
of  Ireland,  and  Corbett,  before  returning  to 


118        THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

America,  wanted  to  go  there  and  give  a  benefit 
for  a  new  church  which  his  uncle  was  build- 
ing in  that  town.  And  Tuam,  Galway,  you 
should  have  seen  it!  We  and  all  our  company 
paid  our  fares  across  to  Ireland  and  to  a  place 
that  American  tourists  rarely  go  through.  I 
dare  say  they  don't  get  one  stranger  a  year. 
Seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  natives  could  not 
speak  English.  They  spoke  in  Irish.  They 
had  no  telephones,  no  electricity  and  the  like. 
To  show  you  how  unsophisticated  these  peo- 
ple were,  the  week  before  we  appeared  in 
Tuam,  Dion  Boucicault's  CoUj  the  Shaugh- 
raunij  sl  play  depicting  Ireland  and  its  peas- 
antry, had  been  performed  there  by  a  company 
headed  by  Dan  Lewis,  an  American  .negro, 
who  played  "Con"! — and  they  stood  for  it! 
This,  by  the  way,  was  the  first  time  the 
Shaughraun  had  been  played  in  Tuam.  One 
would,  therefore,  not  be  surprised  that  in  vis- 
iting this  little  town  in  the  west  of  Ireland 
we  created  more  of  a  sensation  that  we  would 
have  created  in  a  little  town  in  America  or 
Canada.    There  were  great  crowds  to  welcome 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        119 

us,  and  our  man  Corbett,  the  prize-fighter, 
nephew  of  the  priest,  raised  enough  money  in 
one  performance  to  build  a  church  in  Tuam. 

John  Redmond,  speaking  in  the  British  Par- 
liament a  short  time  after,  said  that  the  action 
of  this  "low-down  pugilist"  was  one  of  the  fin- 
est things  he'd  ever  heard  of. 

I  went  back  to  America  on  the  Majestic, 
a  week  ahead  of  the  others,  and  to  show  you 
how  the  interest  in  pugilism  had  grown,  when 
we  cast  anchor  in  the  bay,  the  steamer  was 
surrounded  by  reporters  from  all  the  New 
York  papers,  trying  to  get  an  interview.  They 
shouted  for  Brady  and  I  was  interviewed  from 
the  side  of  the  boat,  we  shouting  questions  back 
and  forth  across  the  strip  of  water  that  sep- 
arated their  tiny  craft  from  the  liner.  The 
one  particular  thing  they  wanted  to  know  was 
whether  Corbett  would  fight  Fitzsimmons, 
Maher  or  somebody  else.  It  is  almost  impos- 
sible to  describe  the  interest  that  was  taken  by 
the  public  in  pugilism  at  that  time. 

It  was  a  stormy  time  when  Corbett  got  back 
to  America.    Pugilism  had  gone  forward  by 


120        THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

leaps  and  bounds.  There  were  twenty  men 
eager  for  an  opportunity  to  meet  the  cham- 
pion. 

While  we'd  been  in  Europe  the  Fitzsimmons 
prestige  had  developed  wonderfully  in  this 
country.  He  was  now  the  acknowledged  mid- 
dleweight champion.  Besides  this,  he  had 
boxed  with  heavyweights  and  had  won  several 
remarkable  matches  by  clean-cut  knock-outs, 
and  he  stood  ready  and  willing  to  meet  Cor- 
bett  for  the  heavyweight  championship,  not- 
withstanding the  fact  that  he  claimed  to  tip 
the  scales  at  about  one  hundred  and  sixty-five 
pounds.  To  be  sure,  Corbett  weighed  very 
little  more  than  this — not  more  than  one  hun- 
dred and  eighty-five  pounds  at  his  best.  But, 
although  Fitzsimmons  was  light  in  the  legs, 
he  was  a  heavyweight  above  the  waist. 

Furthermore,  Corbett  about  this  time  had 
got  ring  fear.  Naturally,  every  man  hates  to 
risk  the  crown  he  has  won.  It  is  a  one-sided 
affair  at  best.  He  has  everything  to  lose  and 
nothing  to  gain.  Corbett  was  earning  any- 
where from  seventy-five  thousand  dollars  to 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN        121 

one  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year,  he  was 
living  on  the  fat  of  the  land,  it  all  looked 
mighty  good  to  him,  and  he  hated  to  take  a 
chance  of  losing  it.  We  were  all  in  clover, 
for  that  matter;  everything  was  going  swim- 
mingly. But  victory  has  its  worries  no  less 
than  defeat.  Every  triumph  brings  its  appre- 
hensions. And  we  began  to  realize  that  if  the 
public  once  got  it  into  their  heads  that  Cor- 
bett  was  afraid  of  Fitzsimmons,  this  revenue 
would  immediately  disappear. 

And  that  which  we  feared  came  upon  us. 
On  our  arrival  in  New  York  from  Europe, 
and  on  Corbett  exhibiting  a  reluctance  to  ac- 
cept the  challenges  that  Fitzsimmons  had  re- 
peatedly hurled  at  him,  our  audiences  began 
to  melt  away.    Something  had  to  be  done! 

About  this  time  an  Irish  sailor  loomed  above 
the  pugilistic  horizon  on  the  Pacific  Coast. 
The  name  of  this  newcomer  was  Tom  Sharkey. 
Also  Peter  Maher,  on  accoimt  of  his  wonderful 
knock-out  punch — although  he  knew  little  or 
nothing  about  boxing — was  rapidly  becoming 
an  idoL     Charles    ("Kid")    McCoy,  another 


122        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

great  boxer,  had  come  to  the  front  "during  our 
tour  in  Europe.  McCoy  weighed  about  one 
hundred  and  sixty  pounds  and  had  a  remark- 
able blow — a  short  snappy  blow,  like  the  snap 
of  a  whip.  He  hit  Sharkey  at  the  Lenox  Ath- 
letic Club  with  this  blow  and  knocked  him  at 
least  six  or  eight  feet.  In  fact,  Sharkey  went 
into  the  air,  described  a  short  curve  and  hit 
the  floor  with  the  back  of  his  head. 

With  all  these  aspirants  after  his  crown, 
Corbett  lived  a  very  unhappy  life  just  about 
this  time.  Each  of  the  would-be  champions 
had  friends  who  bragged  about  their  idol  and 
who  sneered  at  Corbett's  reticence.  It  was  im- 
possible to  treat  their  taunting  with  dignified 
silence,  since  the  sporting  writers  in  the  news- 
papers first  began  to  hint  at  a  curious  reluc- 
tance on  Corbett's  part  and  then  came  out 
openly  and  charged  him  with  cowardice.  And 
so  we  realized  that  something  must  be  done, 
and  done  quickly. 

Understand,  Corbett  was  not  physically 
afraid  of  anybody.  It  was  ring  fear  that  pos- 
sessed him.     There  was  more  than  the  danger 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        123 

of  a  mere  drubbing  in  the  ring;  there  was  the 
danger  of  losing  prestige.  So  we  cast  about 
for  a  means  to  avoid  this.  We  sought  a  way 
by  which  to  interest  the  public  mind  with  any 
kind  of  a  match.  This  was  only  a  way  of  tem- 
porizing, I  admit,  but  it  was  better  than  noth- 
ing. Peter  Jackson  had  remained  in  the  game 
and  was  constantly  after  Corbett,  and  the  lat- 
ter was  perfectly  willing  to  meet  him  because 
he  knew  that  he  "had  him  safe."  But  some- 
how or  other  they  could  not  agree  on  terms 
and  all  attempts  to  arrange  a  match  were 
fruitless.  In  the  midst  of  oiu*  plight  a  strap- 
ping fellow  from  Australia  named  Steve 
O'Donnell  loomed  up.  O'Donnell  was  a  won- 
derfully clever  boxer,  but  lacked  stamina  and 
ring  wisdom. 

So  Corbett  and  myself  hit  upon  a  scheme  of 
staving  off  the  aspirants  by  shoving  O'Don- 
nell into  the  champion's  place,  as  it  were.  We 
tried  to  force  Fitzsimmons  to  make  a  match 
with  the  newcomer  from  Australia,  and  to 
bring  this  about  went  so  far  as  to  put  up  ten 
thousand  dollars  with  the  New  York  Herald, 


124        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

But  Fitzsimmons  was  too  wary.  He  wanted 
Corbett  or  nothing!  You  see,  all  this  time 
Fitzsimmons  was  gaining  more  and  more  rep- 
utation by  meeting  everybody  and  defeating 
them.  We  felt  that  he  was  contemptuous  of 
O'Donnell's  prowess,  that  he  considered  that 
that  worthy  had  not  made  good  sufficiently  in 
the  ring  to  entitle  him  to  such  a  match  as  we 
were  trying  to  force  on  Fitzsimmons,  and  that, 
in  consequence,  lanky  Bob  would  gain  nothing 
in  reputation  from  a  contest  with  O'Donnell. 

So,  to  bolster  up  O'Donnell's  prestige  and  in 
a  way  to  bring  him  within  the  challenge  zone, 
we  very  foolishly  arranged  for  him  to  meet 
Jake  Kilrain  in  Boston  in  an  eight-round  con- 
test. 

O'Donnell  made  a  miserable  exhibition  and 
failed  to  beat  Kilrain,  who  was  an  old  man,  and 
that  settled  O'Donnell  then  and  there.  I  never 
saw  a  more  remarkable  example  of  the  opera- 
tion of  ring  psychology  than  during  this 
match.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Kilrain 
had  fought  Sullivan  a  marvelously  long- 
drawn-out  battle  awav  back  in  '89.     After 


PERMISSON   OF  ROBERT  COSTER 


Jem  Mace 


Prize-fighter  and  sporting  man 


ptMMictiON  or  Noccnr  costcn 


John  Morrissey 
A  champion  prize-fighter 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        125 

that  he  had  lain  dormant,  so  far  as  we  know, 
and  had  but  now  been  resurrected  for  this  con- 
test with  O'Donnell.  It  was  like  bringing  back 
a  race-horse  that  had  passed  the  period  of  his 
usefulness  and  had  been  relegated  to  the  ped- 
lar's cart,  to  race  a  two-year-old.  O'Don- 
nell was  only  twenty-two  years  old  and  was  a 
perfect  specimen  of  an  athlete.  It  was  almost 
an  insult  to  put  him  up  against  such  a  man  as 
Kilrain.  But  even  men  who  possess  ring  wis- 
dom and  coolness  in  the  last  degree  are  apt  to 
have  their  heads  turned  by  taunting  as  did 
"Pompadour  Jim"  in  his  fight  with  Charley 
Mitchell  at  Jacksonville.  I  imagine  the  Aus- 
tralian youngster  was  not  used  to  the  cruel 
guying  that  is  part  of  ring  tactics. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  John  L.  Sullivan  squatted 
himself  back  of  Kilrain's  corner  and  Corbett 
occupied  the  same  position  in  O'Donnell's  cor- 
ner. Sullivan  raved  and  roasted  O'Donnell 
all  through  the  bout  and  threw  taunting  and 
tantalizing  remarks  across  the  ring  to  Corbett, 
the  new  champion.  All  the  retorts  that  Cor- 
bett or  any  one  else  made  had  no  more  effect 


12G        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

on  the  stolid  Kilrain  than  a  corn-stalk  gad 
would  have  on  a  plow  horse.  But  there  is  no 
douht  that  Sullivan's  behavior  and  remarks 
were  the  means  of  causing  O'DonnelFs  piti- 
able exhibition  more  than  any  other  thing. 

After  the  bout  Sullivan  was  in  Reynolds' 
Hotel  in  Boston  as  O'Donnell,  Delaney  and 
myself  passed  through  to  catch  the  midnight 
train.  No  sooner  did  he  catch  sight  of  us  than 
he  rushed  over,  grabbed  O'Donnell  by  the  arm 
and  started  to  repeat  some  of  the  insulting  bal- 
ly-ragging language  he  had  used  during  the 
match.  Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  Sulli- 
van was  an  old  man,  O'Donnell  stood  like  a 
chump  and  took  it  all,  but  when,  as  I  thought, 
the  Bostonian  had  gone  far  enough,  I  pushed 
O'Donnell  aside,  faced  Sullivan  and  handed 
him  the  same  kind  of  abuse  he'd  given  to 
O'Donnell.  This  was  all  a  case  of  bluff  on  my 
part,  since  Sullivan  could  have  crushed  me 
with  a  blow.  But  it  goes  to  show  that  when 
those  fellows  got  up  against  anybody  with  a 
little  nerve  they  were  no  good. 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        127 

The  only  prize-fighter  who  had  great  pluck 
outside  the  ring  as  well  as  in  it  was  Charles 
Mitchell.  Mitchell  was  game  and  was  a 
fighter  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word.  He  was 
cruel,  but  he  was  the  nerviest  one  I  ever  knew. 
As  an  instance  of  his  pluck,  when  he  was  in 
New  York,  trying  to  get  Corbett  to  meet 
Slavin,  the  former  was  playing  at  Miner's 
Theater  on  the  Bowery.  One  night  he  was 
in  the  bar  room  next  door  to  the  theater,  sur- 
rounded with  the  cream  of  East  Side  fighting 
men,  who  were  his  friends,  when  in  came 
Mitchell  and  Sullivan.  After  a  little,  Mitchell 
went  over  to  Corbett,  had  a  few  words  with 
him  and  invited  him  to  go  down  into  the  cellar 
and  fight  him  then  and  there,  and  this  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  Corbett  was  surrounded  by  his 
adherents. 

The  farce  between  O'Donnell  and  Kilrain, 
instead  of  helping  us  out  of  our  dilemma  by 
appeasing  the  public  clamor  for  a  match,  only 
served  to  stir  up  new  rancor.  The  press  went 
at  us  with  renewed  energy  and  vigor.     We 


128        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

stood  the  lambasting  that  they  gave  us  as  long 
as  we  could,  and  at  last  realized  that  it  was  ab- 
solutely necessary  that  Corbett  meet  Fitzsim- 
mons. 


iThe  general  demand  for  a  match  between 
Corbett  and  Fitzsimmons  became  at  last  a  pub- 
lic clamor,  and  notwithstanding  Corbett's  aver- 
sion to  meeting  "lanky  Bob,"  we  found  it  im- 
possible to  avoid  the  issue*  And  right  here  we 
were  confronted  with  a  paradoxical  situation. 
Although  we  had  made  the  match  because  of 
public  insistence  and  for  no  other  reason,  there 
wasn't  a  state  in  the  Union  that  would  let  us 
pull  off  the  contest  in  its  territory.  No  sooner 
were  the  articles  signed  than  we  received  won- 
derful offers  from  all  parts  of  the  world.  Daw- 
son, in  the  Klondike,  ojBfered  us  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars  to  go  up  there  and  fight.  flSut 
that  was  out  of  the  question.  Presently  came 
Dan  Stewart,  from  Dallas,  Texas,  a  very  per- 
suasive gentleman  with  a  good  front  and 
plenty  of  money.  He  convinced  us  that  it 
was  possible  to  have  the  fight  in  his  state  and 

18a 


180        THE  [FIGHTINGS  MAN 

offered  us  forty  thousand  dollars  to  go  down 
there  and  pull  it  off.  To  allay  our  doubts,  he 
deposited  five  thousand  dollars  to  cover  train- 
ing expenses.  So  we  went  to  Texas  and 
started  in  on  a  race  track  at  San  Antonio  to 
get  ready  for  the  contest.  Fitzsimmons  estab- 
lished training  quarters  at  some  place  near 
Dallas,  I  think. 

Almost  as  soon  as  we  got  there  Kiovernor 
Culbertson  warned  us  not  to  fight.  We  re- 
torted that  there  was  nothing  on  the  statute 
books  of  Texas  to  prevent  the  contest.  The 
governor  replied  that  even  so,  he  would  not 
allow  it  to  take  place  in  the  state,  and  he  asked 
us  in  a  very  nice  way  to  refrain  and  leave. 
Stewart,  who  was  a  political  power  in  Texas 
at  that  time,  assured  us  that  the  governor 
would  not  interfere,  that  he — Stewart — ^had 
the  advice  of  high-priced  lawyers  to  that  ef- 
fect. The  governor  and  Stewart  engaged  in 
a  battle  of  words  in  the  newspapers  and  finally 
the  governor  called  a  special  session  of  the  leg- 
islature, which  cost  the  state  about  twenty- 
Eve  thousand  dollars.     The  law-makers  were 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        131 

summoned  from  all  parts  of  that  vast  state  to 
meet  in  Austin  on  a  week's  notice.  They  met, 
the  governor  sent  in  a  message  demanding  the 
enactment  of  a  law  prohibiting  pugilism  or 
boxing  of  any  kind  in  the  state.  The  law  was 
promptly  passed  and  all  our  hopes  of  contest- 
ing in  Texas  were  overl 

Let  me  say  right  here  that  when  this  match 
was  made  moving  pictures  were  just  coming 
into  vogue.  There  were  no  moving-picture 
theaters.  But  I  foresaw  the  value  of  such  a 
thing  and  when  the  match  was  made  demanded 
that  as  a  bonus  to  me  for  bringing  it  about  I 
should  have  the  picture  privilege.  OBut  very 
soon  Fitzsimmons  lound  out  that  I  had  this 
and  Stewart  realized  what  a  plum  he  had  given 
away.  The  picture  privilege  for  the  Corbett- 
Fitzsimmons  contest  eventually  realized  for  its 
owners  more  than  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars. 

Disgusted  with  the  treatment  he  had  re- 
ceived in  Texas,  Stewart  jumped  to  Arkansas, 
where,  also,  there  was  no  law  on  the  statute 
books  to  prevent  a  boxing  contest.    At  his  re- 


182        THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

quest,  the  Corbett  party  went  on  to  Hot 
Springs  in  that  state  and  installed  themselves 
in  training  quarters  in  the  suburbs  of  the  town. 
Fitzsimmons  refused  to  leave  Texas.  I  firmly 
believe  that  at  this  point  Fitzsimmons  was 
afraid  of  Corbett  and  did  not  want  to  meet 
him,  or  that  he  wanted  to  break  oif  the  present 
match  and  make  an  entirely  new  one  and  by 
so  doing  deprive  me  of  the  moving-picture 
rights. 

Upon  our  advent  Governor  Clark  rose  up  on 
his  hind  haunches  and  declared  there  should 
be  no  pugilism  in  Arkansas  if  he  could  help  it. 
The  citizens  of  Hot  Springs  replied  that  there 
would  be  a  fight  in  Hot  Springs  even  if  they 
had  to  surround  the  town  with  volunteer  militia 
and  prevent  the  invasion  by  the  governor  if  he 
attempted  to  interfere. 

The  sheriff  of  Hot  Springs  at  that  time  was 
a  man  named  Reb  Houpt,  and  he  stood  in  with 
the  citizens  of  the  town.  The  governor  knew 
this  and  so  summoned  Houpt  to  Little  Rock 
and  told  him  that  if  he  did  not  produce  Corbett 
within  a  week  he  would  remove  him.    This  left 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN        133 

us  in  a  very  dubious  position.  The  citizens  of 
Hot  Springs  urged  us  to  pay  no  attention  to 
the  governor's  talk.  And  then,  as  things  were 
getting  very  warm  indeed,  to  the  amazement 
of  everybody,  Mr.  Lanky  Bob  Fitzsimmons 
crossed  the  Arkansas  state  line  at  Texarkana 
and  deliberately  gave  himself  up  to  two  officers 
who  had  been  sent  by  Governor  Clark  to  meet 
him.  Right  there  it  looked  as  if  Fitzsimmons 
did  not  want  to  fight! 

Corbett  by  this  time  had  got  himself  into 
magnificent  condition.  We  were  all  very  san- 
guine that  he  would  win  and  I  honestly  believe 
to  this  day  that  if  we  had  not  been  stopped  in 
Arkansas,  Corbett  would  have  beaten  the  Cor- 
nishman  easily. 

After  the  arrest  of  Fitzsimmons,  who  was 
promptly  taken  to  Little  Rock,  we  realized 
that  Corbett  could  not  fight  the  battle  by  him- 
self, and  so  accepted  a  very  polite  invitation 
from  the  governor  to  visit  him  at  the  capital. 
When  we  got  there  we  found  that  the  governor 
had  put  Fitzsimmons  in  charge  of  a  sheriff 
called  Jesse  Hurd,  who  was  the  most  villain- 


X84i        THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

Dus-looking  man  I  had  ever  seen  and  who  had 
the  proud  distinction  of  having  killed  seven- 
teen men.  Hurd  and  Houpt  were  exceedingly- 
jealous  of  each  other  as  man-killers.  Hurd 
felt  keenly  that  his  rival  was  after  the  laurels 
which  patience  no  less  than  enterprise  had 
placed  on  his  hrow  and  that  he  would  avail 
of  any  provocation,  however  slight,  that  did 
not  put  him  heyond  the  pale  of  the  law,  to 
bring  his  own  line  of  achievements  up  to  that 
of  his  enemy.  The  margin  was  a  small  one. 
Houpt  had  killed  sixteen  men.  The  influx  of 
boxers  and  their  adherents  not  only  gave 
Houpt  a  chance  to  cut  another  notch  in  his 
gun  stock,  but  made  it  incumbent  for  Hurd 
to  maintain  his  superiority.  So,  you  see,  we 
Svere  in  the  position  of  being  compelled  to  "pay 
the  freight'*  should  the  ambition  or  caprice  of 
(either  of  these  gentlemen  prompt  him  to  act 
on  any  so-called  "provocation."  In  conse- 
guence  it  behooved  us  to  walk  very  "thin" 
indeed. 

It  was  unfortunate,  under  the  circumstances. 


THE  FIGHTINGS  MAN        135 

that  the  night  before  we  were  to  meet  the  gov- 
ernor one  of  our  party  named  O'Farrell  had 
run  into  Jesse  Hurd  somewhere  in  the  town 
and  had  made  some  injudicious  remarks  about 
the  attitude  of  the  state  toward  this  contest. 
Hurd  promptly  grabbed  O'Farrell  by  the 
back  of  the  neck  and  took  him  to  the  town  jail. 
I  learned  of  the  affair  about  midnight  and 
called  the  governor  up  on  the  telephone — ^we 
were  then  in  Little  Rock.  I  told  him  what 
Hm-d  had  done  and  reminded  him  of  the  fact 
that  he'd  guaranteed  us  protection  if  we  would 
come  to  the  capital,  and  demanded  the  release 
of  Q'Farrell.  At  the  same  time  I  made  some 
pretty  strong  remarks  about  Hurd  to  the  gov- 
ernor. While  I  was  at  breakfast  next  morn- 
ing I  saw  Hurd  enter  the  room.  From  his 
looks,  I  judged  that  the  governor  had  told  hira 
what  I  said  about  him  and  had  reprimanded 
him  for  what  he  had  done.  He  walked  over  to 
where  Fitzsimmons  was  sitting  and  I  kne\^ 
from  the  way  he  looked  around  the  room  as 
he  spoke  to  that  gentleman  that  he  was  asking 


136        THEI   FIGHTING   MAN 

where  that  man  Brady  was.  Fitzsimmons 
pointed  to  me  and  Hurd  promptly  rose  and 
walked  over  to  my  table. 

"Is  this  Brady  ?'^  he  demanded. 

"Yes,"  said  I. 

]My  two  hands  were  on  the  table  and  I  was 
shivering  in  my  shoes.  It  was  lucky  I  had  the 
presence  of  mind  to  put  my  hands  where  he 
could  see  them.  If  I  had  not  done  so,  there 
is  no  question,  he  would  have  killed  me  then 
and  there  and  then  reported  that  he  did  it  in 
self-defense.  He  saw  that  I  had  outwitted 
him  and  stood  looking  me  through  and 
through  for  a  few  moments,  then  snarled 
something  and  turned  on  his  heel  and  walked 
back  to  Fitzsimmons.  That  was  the  narrowest 
escape  I  ever  had  in  my  pugilis*tic  experience. 
I've  often  thought  that  if  I  had  been  less  con- 
spicuous at  the  time,  that  if  I'd  been  some  in- 
offensive citizen  who  had  been  rash  enough  to 
comment  on  any  act  of  this  arrogant  gentle- 
man, he  would  have  assassinated  me,  even  if 
I'd  held  my  hands  high  in  the  air  as  a  token 
of  my  utter  defenselessness.    But  feeling  was 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        187 

running  so  high  that  Hurd  knew  that  any  act 
of  his  would  have  subjected  him  to  a  rigid  in- 
vestigation, so  he  chose  the  part  of  wisdom  over 
that  of  "valor"! 

We  met  the  governor  in  the  state  house  on 
noon  of  that  day.  At  one  side  of  the  table  was 
Fitzsimmons  in  charge  of  Hurd  and  at  the 
other  sat  Corbett  in  charge  of  Houpt.  The 
room  was  filled  with  newspaper  men  and  fol- 
lowers of  pugilism.  The  governor  sat  back, 
chewed  a  cigar  deliberately  for  some  moments, 
which  added  impressiveness  to  the  pronuncia- 
mento  of  which  he  was  about  to  deliver  himself, 
and  said: 

"Gentlemen,  I  have  a  few  words  to  say  to 
you.  I  do  not  propose  to  do  as  my  brother 
governor  of  Texas  has  done.  I  shall  not  put 
this  state  to  an  expense  of  twenty  or  thirty 
thousand  dollars  by  convening  the  legislature 
just  to  pass  a  law  to  keep  you  gentlemen  from 
boxing  within  our  borders*  I've  a  simpler 
way." 

He  turned  to  the  pugilists. 

**I  want  to  tell  you  this.     You,  Mr.  Fitz- 


138        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

simmons,  are  in  charge  of  our  estimable  citi- 
zen, Mr.  Jesse  Hurd,  who  has  the  reputation 
of  having  killed  seventeen  men,  and  you,  ]Mr. 
Corbett,  are  in  charge  of  our  equally  estimable 
citizen,  jVIr.  Reb  Houpt,  who  has  only  killed 
sixteen  men.  Remember,  there  is  a  keen  riv- 
alry between  these  gentlemen.  It  is  ]Mr. 
Houpt's  ambition  to  catch  up  with  ]\Ir.  Hurd 
— and  it  is  Mr.  Hurd's  ambition  to  keep  ahead 
of  Jlr.  Houpt.  Now,  I  instruct  both  of  these 
officers  that  if  you,  Corbett  and  Fitzsimmons, 
as  much  as  bat  an  eye  at  each  other  in  this  state 
while  I  am  governor  of  it,  you  will  go  back 
home  in  a  box !" 

Turning  to  Hurd,  His  Excellency  said, 
"You  understand?" 

"Yep,"  said  Hurd. 

Then  the  governor  looked  significantly  at 
Houpt. 

"Yep,"  said  Houpt. 

And  then  we  were  politely  ushered  out  of  the 
governor's  room,  and  I  never  saw  a  crowd 
make  dust  to  get  out  of  any  state  as  we  did 
to  get  out  of  Arkansas.     In  fact,  we  slunk 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN         139 

down  a  side  street  to  find  the  train  to  take  us 
to  the  Tennessee  line!  Governor  Clark  had 
found  a  way  to  stop  prize-fighting  in  Arkansas 
without  the  help  of  the  legislature. 

This  practically  settled  that  contract  he- 
tween  Fitzsimmons  and  Corbett.  In  fact,  we 
declared  the  match  off  ourselves.  But  it  did 
not  discourage  Stewart.  For  a  time  things 
remained  in  statu  quo,  Corbett  went  back  to 
showing  in  the  theater  and  Fitzsimmons  went 
about  his  own  business.  The  report  of  our  ex- 
perience in  Texas  and  Arkansas,  instead  of 
serving  to  quiet  the  public,  seemed  only  to  whet 
its  impatience,  and  it  clamored  all  the  more 
loudly  for  a  battle. 

There  was  no  law  on  the  statute  books  of 
Nevada  against  boxing,  but  experience  had 
laught  us  that  this  meant  nothing.  However, 
Stewart,  no  whit  discouraged,  w^ent  to  Carson 
and  in  some  clever  way  got  next  to  the  gov- 
ernor— who  was  a  big  fat  Dutchman — and 
persuaded  him  to  ask  us  to  come  to  that  state 
for  the  contest.  This  was  about  eight  months 
after  the  Hot  Springs  fiasco.    We  entered  into 


140        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

another  agreement,  but  this  time  I  did  not  get 
the  moving-picture  rights.  Stewart,  by  the 
new  contract,  was  to  build  an  arena  at  Carson 
with  a  seating  capacity  of  twenty  thousand 
and  to  arrange  for  the  pictures.  He  was  to 
get  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  profits  on  all  privi- 
leges and  contests  and  the  remainder  was  to 
go  to  Corbett  and  Fitzsimmons — share  and 
share  alike. 

Corbett,  his  trainer  Delaney  and  the  rest  of 
his  retinue  started  for  Carson  about  a  month 
before  the  event  and  began  to  train  at  a  little 
hotel  three  miles  out  of  town.  Suddenly  I  be- 
gan to  notice  a  change  in  Corbett.  He  who 
had  always  been  so  intelligently  receptive  of 
the  suggestion  and  wisdom  of  those  in  whose 
skill  he  had  confidence  became  intractable.  He 
became  impatient  of  suggestion  or  opposition. 
He  wanted  to  run  things  his  own  way.  He 
refused  to  follow  the  advice  of  Delaney,  who 
knew  him  so  well,  but  instead  acted  on  the  ad- 
vice of  Judge  Lawler,  an  old  California; 
friend,  who  had  come  to  the  training  quarters 
and  who  knew  about  as  much  about  boxing  as 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        141 

a  child.  During  his  training  he  shifted  from 
the  methods  that  he  had  found  so  serviceable 
but  which  to  this  genius  of  progress  had  be- 
come old.  I  honestly  believe  Corbett  lost  his 
chances  by  the  way  he  prepared  himself  for 
battle. 

If  I  were  a  superstitious  man  I  might  give 
undue  weight  to  the  following  incident  as  a 
bad  omen.  Just  before  Corbett  had  met  Sul- 
livan and  while  he  was  in  training,  he  bought 
a  collie  for  ten  dollars — a  wonderfully  pugna- 
cious dog  which  would  tackle  anything.  There 
was  one  thing  on  earth  that  Ned  loved, 
and  only  one,  and  that  was  Corbett.  And 
Jim  loved  the  dog  for  his  bravery.  Ned 
always  slept  at  the  end  of  his  master's 
bed  and  if  anybody  approached  the  room 
he  would  give  a  terrible  growl.  In  a  word, 
he  was  Corbett's  protector.  Ned  was  Cor- 
bett's  constant  companion  during  training 
for  the  Sullivan  fight  and  went  with  him  to 
New  Orleans.  Then  he  traveled  everywhere 
with  his  victorious  master  and  made  his  ap- 
pearance on  the  stage  with  him  in  the  training 


142         THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

scene  in  Gentleman  Jack.  It  was  Ned's 
growls  that  aroused  the  camp  one  night  when 
Corbett  was  training  for  the  Mitchell  fight  to 
the  fact  that  some  persons  had  climbed  up  next 
to  Corbett's  room.  It  looked  as  if  they  were 
there  to  maim  or  hurt  Corbett.  In  fact,  when 
they  were  discovered  and  shot  at,  they  shot 
back.  Of  course,  Ned  was  the  hero  of  the 
affair. 

When  we  went  to  Europe,  Jim  loaned  Ned 
to  John  W.  Norton  and  he  remained  with  that 
gentleman  until  Norton  died. 

When  Corbett  went  to  Carson  he  forgot  all 
about  Ned,  partly  from  the  fact,  I  suppose, 
that  his  brother  Harry  had  brought  from  San 
Francisco  a  beautiful  full-blooded  collie  for 
whom  Jim  had  now  conceived  a  deep  affec- 
tion. Not  knowing  this,  I  thought  it  would 
be  a  good  idea  to  take  Ned  with  me  when  I 
should  join  Corbett  at  Carson.  I  paid  Ned's 
expenses  across  the  continent  in  the  baggage 
car,  took  good  care  of  him  and  anticipated 
great  pleasure  in  introducing  him  to  Corl^ett 
again.    I  found  Jim  sitting  with  the  beautiful 


Jim  Jeffries 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        148 

collie  dog  in  his  lap.  Ned,  furiously  jealous, 
sprang  at  the  throat  of  the  dog  who  had  sup- 
planted him  in  his  old  master's  affections,  and 
they  had  a  terrible  row  until  Corbett  savagely 
pulled  them  apart  and  kicked  Ned  out  of  the 
door  into  the  deep  snow.  That  night  Corbett, 
who  slept  in  a  cottage  opposite  the  little  hotel 
where  we  were  training,  took  the  collie  and 
went  to  bed,  and  the  next  morning,  outside  of 
Corbett's  door,  with  his  nose  on  the  sill,  was 
Ned — frozen  stiff  I  And  Corbett  lost  the 
fight! 

It  became  necessary  while  we  were  at  Car- 
son to  get  some  young  fellow  who  could 
"rough"  Corbett  about.  The  men  we  had 
were  stale  and  knew  Corbett's  tricks,  and  De- 
laney  thought  it  advisable  to  get  somebody  to 
come  up  there  and  be  a  sort  of  punching  bag 
for  the  champion — a  man  who  could  stand  his 
punches.  The  trainer  said  he  knew  of  a  young 
man  in  San  Francisco  who  would  exactly  suit 
the  purpose.  So  he  telegraphed  on  and  two 
days  later  James  J.  Jeffries  got  off  the  train 
and  became  part  of  the  camp.     Jeffries  and 


144        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

Corbett  used  to  fight  viciously  every  day  and 
the  new  arrival  could  take  all  that  "Pompa- 
doiu-  Jim"  could  give  him,  which  did  not  suit 
the  older  man  at  all.  Yarns  were  published 
in  the  newspapers  about  Corbett  knocking  out 
Jeffries  in  practise,  but  no  such  thing  ever 
occurred.  There  was  something  about  this 
punching  bag,  Jeffries,  that  made  me  and 
Delaney  observe  him  carefully.  We  saw  that 
he  was  a  "comer"  and  I  at  once  made  a  propo- 
sition to  take  him  east  with  me,  but  he  did  not 
want  to  go. 

The  preparation  for  the  taking  of  moving 
pictures  of  this  fight  was  next  on  the  program. 
A  great  big  rough  house  was  built  and  four 
cameras  installed,  so  that  if  one  broke  down 
the  others  could  operate.  This  was  the  first 
time  that  machines  were  called  in  to  take  pic- 
tures of  any  great  event — the  beginning  of  it 
all — ^just  an  experiment — and  nobody  knew 
whether  the  cameras  would  work.  In  fact,  in 
the  last  round  the  camera  did  break  down  at 
the  most  unfortunate  moment  and  failed  to  get 
a  picture  of  the  blow  with  which  Corbett  was 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        145 

finished — the  one  which  Fitzsimmons  made  fa- 
mous as  the  "solar  plexus  blow." 

At  the  time  of  the  event  the  place  was  full 
of  notables.  Senator  John  J.  Ingalls,  of  Kan- 
sas, was  there  as  a  special  writer  and  it  was 
very  amusing  to  see  this  very  distinguished 
man  as  he  sat  in  a  box  with  Mrs.  Fitzsimmons, 
who  was  constantly  loudly  coaching  her  hus- 
band in  terms  of  the  ring. 

At  the  sound  of  the  bell  Corbett  began 
punching  and  jabbing  with  his  left,  which  wftS 
very  effective,  and  for  six  rounds  made  a  fool 
of  his  opponent.  In  the  sixth,  Corbett  landed 
on  Fitzsimmons  and  knocked  him  down.  Fitz- 
simmons took  the  count.  After  the  fight  was 
over  we  claimed  that  he  was  down  longer 
than  ten  seconds  and  that  William  Mul- 
doon,  who  was  the  referee,  favored  him  at  this 
point.  But  we  did  that  for  effect.  The  truth 
of  the  matter  is,  Fitzsimmons  was  not  badly 
hurt  in  this  round  and  simply  did  what  all  ex- 
perienced boxers  do:  took  the  benefit  of  nine 
full  seconds  before  getting  up.  Then  Corbett 
in  his  endeavor  to  knock  lanky  Bob  out  fought 


146        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

himself  out  and  the  men  returned  to  their  cor- 
ners. Fitzsimmons  recuperated  very  quickly 
and  was  himself  again  at  the  beginning  of  the 
seventh  round.  But  Corbett  never  "came 
back."  He  grew  weaker  and  weaker,  while 
the  enemy  grew  stronger  and  stronger  until 
the  thirteenth  round,  when  the  Cornishman  de- 
livered his  famous  solar  plexus,  and  that  was 
^e  end  of  Corbett  as  champion. 

Corbett  got  up  and  tried  to  Bght  Bob  after 
the  bell  had  rung.  I  jumped  into  the  ring 
and  made  a  speech  and  claimed  it  was  all  a  mis- 
take and  that  he  was  not  out — that  he  had  a 
right  to  go  on.  But  the  verdict  was  against 
us;  Corbett  was  taken  to  his  room,  broken- 
hearted, and  I  believe  that  he  contemplated 
suicide. 

After  the  battle  Corbett  seemed  to  lose  heart 
in  everything.  He  prepared  to  go  back  to  San 
Francisco,  declaring  that  he  would  never  re- 
turn to  the  East  again.  Not  long  after  he 
Had  reached  the  co^st  a  mutual  friend  in  San 
Francisco  wired  me  of  "Pompadour  Jim's" 
resolve  and  I  promptly  wired  back  that  as 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        147 

I  had  settled  with  Stewart  I  was  going  to  San 
Francisco  to  hring  Corbett  east  with  me. 

The  receipts  of  this  affair — forty-four  thou- 
sand dollars — were  very  disappointing,  but 
from  other  sources  we  got  about  twenty  thou- 
sand dollars,  which  went  to  defray  expenses. 
The  pictures  made  between  six  hundred 
thousand  and  seven  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars. They  were  exhibited  everywhere,  the 
world  over.  Phenomenal  prices  were  paid  for 
state  rights — this  was  the  first  time  moving 
pictures  were  shown  in  high-class  theaters. 
They  played  The  Academy  of  Music,  New 
York;  the  Grand  Opera  House,  Chicago,  and 
the  Boston  Theater  to  enormous  receipts.  One 
machine  was  sent  around  the  world,  operating 
in  Australia,  China,  Japan,  India,  South  Af- 
rica and  Cairo.  I  believe  that  these  pictures 
made  more  money  than  any  others  up  to  the 
present  time  and  that  it  was  they  which  proved 
the  value  of  moving  pictures  for  great  events 
and  for  show  purposes. 

Notwithstanding  the  fact  that  we  were  to 
have  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  picture  receipts,  Mr, 


148        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

Stewart  took  the  films  to  New  York,  formed  a 
corporation  with  himself  as  president  and  his 
brother  as  treasurer,  took  the  entire  manage- 
ment of  the  thing  out  of  our  hands,  and  left 
us  helpless — thankful  for  what  we  could  get. 
I  think  each  man  received  about  eighty  thou- 
sand dollars. 

After  the  settlement  with  Stewart,  I  jumped 
hack  to  'Frisco  to  find  Corbett.  He  had  no 
more  ambition  and  was  reluctant  to  go  east. 
I  told  him  that  already  a  very  strange  thing 
had  developed.  It  was  this.  Fitzsimmons,  al- 
though having  fought  a  wonderful  fight,  was 
distinctly  unpopular  with  the  public.  I  laid 
before  Corbett  a  little  scheme  that  I  had  con- 
ceived and  worked  out  on  my  way  west.  We 
would  take  advantage  of  Fitzsimmons'  unpop- 
ularity and  by  a  little  engineering  and  schem- 
ing persuade  the  public  that  "lanky  Bob"  had 
actually  been  knocked  out  in  the  sixth  round 
at  Carson  City  and  that  Corbett  had  been 
robbed  of  the  match.  The  scheme  was  imme- 
diately to  start  east,  oppose  the  new  champion 
at  every  point,  play  against  him,  give  him  a 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN         149 

dose  of  his  own  medicine,  nag  and  bait  him  in 
the  way  he  used  to  nag  and  bait  Corbett,  turn 
the  tables  on  him,  make  him  the  pursued  in- 
stead of  the  pursuer — as  he  used  to  be — put 
Corbett  in  the  position  of  the  man  clamoring 
for  justice  and  Fitzsimmons  in  the  hateful  po- 
sition of  the  man  denying  justice,  and  all  this 
time  we  were  frequently  to  keep  demanding 
another  fight  and  prove  or  try  to  prove  to  the 
public  that  Fitzsimmons  was  afraid  to  meet 
Corbett  again. 

Following  out  this  project  we  played 
against  Fitzsimmons  in  Denver  and  again  in 
Kansas  City.  Remember,  Fitzsimmons  had 
had  a  play  written  for  himself  in  which  he  was 
trying  to  act.  We  had  so  brought  the  ca- 
pricious public  around  to  our  way  of  thinEng 
that  the  Cornishman  played  to  empty  benches 
while  Corbett  packed  the  theaters. 

In  creating  this  sentiment  I  had  hit  on  one 
idea:  to  use  the  moving  pictures.  These  were 
to  be  shown  in  New  York  at  The  Academy  of 
Music.  The  people  at  that  time  knew  very 
little  about  this  new  form  of  entertainment. 


150        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

The  mechanical  method  of  producing  it  had 
not  been  exploited  in  the  Sunday  supplements 
as  yet.  And  this  was  what  made  it  possible  for 
me  to  use  the  pictures  for  my  purpose.  The 
people  did  not  know  that  one  could  run  the 
pictures  fast  or  slow.  When  the  pictures  were 
presented  in  New  York  I  insisted  on  being 
allowed  to  do  the  explanatory  talking  before 
the  curtain.  In  the  dark  I  described  the  fight. 
I  had  posted  the  operator  that  when  he  got  to 
the  sixth  round  of  the  contest,  when  Fitzsim- 
mons  was  knocked  down,  he  was  to  run  his 
machine  very  slowly.  Before  the  round  started 
I  called  the  attention  of  the  audience  to  what 
was  coming  and  suggested  that  when  they 
came  to  that  particular  part  they  watch  the 
referee's  hand,  hold  a  watch  on  him,  and  see 
how  many  seconds  he  counted.  At  the  proper 
time  I  said,  "Now,  watch!"  and  then  counted, 
"One — two — three — four — five — six — seven — 
eight — nine — ^ten — eleven — ^twelve — ^thirteen." 

^'He  was  down  thirteen  seconds,  ladies  and 
gentlemen  I" 

But  just  then  one  man  in  the  audience  stood 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        151 

up  and  shouted,  "You're  a  liarl"  and  I  recog- 
nized the  voice  of  William  Muldoon.  Mul- 
doon,  you  M^ill  remember,  was  the  referee  at 
the  Corbett-Filzsimmons  fighL 

But  it  was  no  use!  We  could  neither  taunt 
nor  lure  Fitzsimmons  into  a  battle.  From  the 
very  moment  he  became  champion,  he  seemed 
to  be  struck  with  ring  fever.  He  was  fearful 
of  his  laurels.  He  wanted  to  live  on  the  show 
business  and  so  he  tried  to  avoid  a  battle  with 
anybody.  It  became  harder  to  get  him  into 
the  ring  than  anybody  else  I'd  ever  known. 
He  refused  challenges  from  everywhere.  But 
Corbett  pursued  him.  He  even  pulled  his  nose 
in  Green's  Hotel  in  Philadelphia  and  told  him 
that  if  he  got  him  in  the  ring  again  he  would 
'^get  his  1"  But  Bob  absolutely  refused  to  meet 
him  again. 

Presently  I  began  to  realize  that  public  in-* 
terest  in  pugilism  was  on  the  wane,  that  there 
was  very  little  left  in  it  for  me.  Corbett  was 
my  friend  and  I  had  made  plenty  of  money 
for  him  and  for  myself.  I  had  swelled  up 
when  he   was   victorious  and   when   he   was 


152        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

whipped  I  still  stuck  to  him.  But  he  could 
not  draw  money  as  he  had  done  before.  The 
game  was  getting  poorer  and  poorer,  and  I 
realized  that  the  parting  of  the  ways  had  come. 

I  had  kept  active  in  theatricals  during  all 
of  the  period  I  have  been  telling  you  about, 
producing  such  plays  as  Trilby^  The  New 
South,  The  Veteran,  Nero,  After  Dark,  The 
'Bottom  of  the  Sea,  The  Cotton  King,  Human- 
ity and  numerous  revivals  of  Shakespeare 
which  were  becoming  popular  in  New  York 
City  at  that  time.  But  it  was  my  connection 
with  the  prize  ring  that  made  me  a  famous 
character.  Nor  was  this  notoriety  distasteful 
to  me.  On  the  contrary,  the  glamour  of  it  all 
appealed  to  me.  I  dare  say  my  name  was  men- 
tioned in  the  newspapers  at  one  time  as  often  aS 
Mr.  Roosevelt's. 

Hut  this  reputation  did  me  no  good  as  a 
theater  man.  It  was  too  much  Brady,  the 
pugilist,  Brady,  the  fight  manager.  And, 
mind  you,  only  a  very  small  part  of  my  life 
Ha3  been  spent  in  the  field  of  pugilism  as  com- 


THE    FIGHTING    MAX         158 

pared  with  the  time  I  had  devoted  to  the  the- 
ater. 

And  now  that  I  had  determined  to  cut  out 
pugilism,  I  became  more  ambitious  theatri- 
cally. But  the  ghost  of  my  "ring"  reputation 
followed  me.  I  made  a  proposition  to  a  very 
famous  actress,  Mrs.  Pat  Campbell,  and  to 
Forbes-Robertson.  She  had  accepted  my  terms 
and  an  American  run  had  been  arranged  for 
her  when  she  sent  for  me  and  said,  "There  has 
been  a  little  misunderstanding,  Mr.  Brady.  I 
could  not  possibly  go  to  America  with  you." 

"Why  not?"  said  I,  astounded, 

"Why,  there  is  one  thing  you  failed  to  tell 
me,"  she  said.    "You  manage  prize-fighters!" 

About  this  time  Corbett  was  crazy  to  start  a 
saloon  in  the  city  of  New  York,  and  I  had  dis- 
covered Way  Down  East.  Corbett  had  an  in- 
terest in  this  play  and  I  was  to  have  an  interest 
in  his  saloon.  But  we  could  not  agree  over 
certain  matters  and  so  decided  to  quit  each 
other  for  good  and  all.  I  gave  over  all  my  in- 
terests in  Corbett's  plays  and  other  projects 


154        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

and  he  gave  over  all  his  interest  in  mine,  which 
included  a  twenty-five  per  cent,  share  of  Way 
Hown  Eastj  a  play  that  afterward  netted  a 
million  dollars. 

I  now  devoted  myself  to  first-class  theatri- 
cals and  publicly  announced  that  I  had  got 
through  with  pugilism.  I  refused  to  talk 
about  prize-fighters.  I  would  not  be  inter- 
viewed about  great  events,  past,  present  or 
future.  I  asked  the  newspapers  to  keep  my 
name  out  of  pugilism.  In  short,  I  married 
Grace  George  and  she  made  me  promise  to 
give  up  that  particular  department  of  enter- 
prise. 


#^^ 


COPYRIGHT,  BROWN   BROS. 


Grace  George 


J.  R.  Grismer 


VI 

Now  that  I  was  out  of  pugilism,  I  devoted 
all  my  time  and  energy  to  the  business  of  the 
theater.  I  was  producing  plays  on  an  increas- 
ing scale  and  realized  that  I  must  have  a  New 
York  house  of  my  own  through  which  to  ex- 
ploit them.  Not  long  after  I  had  made  up  my 
mind  to  do  this,  I  met  J.  M.  Hill,  who  was 
anxious  to  get  rid  of  his  theater — ^the  Manhat- 
tan. 

"Will  you  take  the  lease  of  my  theater?" 
said  he. 

"Yes,  at  my  price,"  said  I. 

He  wanted  something  like  thirty  thousand 
dollars  a  year.  I  offered  twenty  thousand  dol- 
lars and  got  it.  At  that  time  I  was  doing 
Business  with  Florenz  Zeigfield,  managing  the 
Hrst  tour  of  Anna  Held  through  the  country. 

155 


156        THE   FIGHTING   MAN 

Zeigfield  was  present  at  the  negotiations  witli 
Hill  and  declared  himself  in  for  a  one-half 
interest  in  the  theater. 

Having  at  last  got  a  theater  of  my  own,  I 
Setermined  to  try  out  Way  Down  East — a 
play  in  which  I  had  supreme  confidence.  This 
play  was  written  hy  Lotti^  Blair  Parker  at  a 
time  when  her  husband,  Harry  Doel  Parker, 
was  working  in  my  oflSce  as  booking  agent. 
Hrs.  Parker  had  submitted  to  me  two  or  three 
bad  plays  before,  and  I  had  turned  them  down. 
Parker,  who  considered  his  wife  an  infallible 
dramatic  genius,  conceived  the  idea  that  some- 
how I  had  become  prejudiced  against  her 
work,  and  they  decided  to  submit  her  next  ef- 
fort anonymously.  So  one  summer  day  Mrs. 
Fernandez,  the  agent — now  dead — ^handed  me 
iKree  manuscripts. 

^Who  wrote  them?'*  saiS  I. 

^ever  mind,"  said  she. 

Dne  of  them  was  called  Anriie  Laurie.  I 
started  to  read  it.  At  the  end  of  the  first  act 
I  knew  it  was  a  great  thing;  at  the  end  of  the 
fourth,  I  knew  it  would  make  a  fortune.  Next 


THE   FIGHTINGS   MAN        157 

day  I  senll  for  Parker  and  said,  "Find  ouli  who 
sent  these  plays  here  I'' 

He  looked  them  over  and  replied,  "My  wife 
did." 

"It  will  need  a  lot  of  fixing,"  said  I.  "Now, 
I'll  give  your  wife  a  per  cent,  of  the  gross  re- 
ceipts until  it  reaches  ten  thousand  dollars  and 
you  must  let  me  do  what  I  please  with  the 

play." 

This  ParEer  and  his  wife  agreed  to  3o.  I 
got  Joseph  Grismer  to  fix  up  the  play  and 
gave  him  a  third  interest  in  it  for  his  work. 
The  play  was  afterward  named  Way  Down 
East  and  made  over  a  million  dollars,  of  which 
Grismer's  share  was  three  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  dollars.  Curiously,  Mrs.  Parker  has 
never  written  a  successful  play  since. 

Way  Down  East  is  one  of  the  great  shining 
lights  as  a  money  maker.  At  first  the  puhlig 
refused  to  take  it  very  seriously.  I  kept  it  at 
the  Manhattan  Theater  for  seven  months  and 
during  that  whole  time  I  did  not  have  a  win- 
ning week.  But  my  confidence  in  the  play 
Had  not  waned  one  whit  and  I  kept  it  going 


158        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

just  to  make  a  Metropolitan  reputation  for  it 
for  road  purposes.  And  results  justified 
my  confidence  I  The  first  time  Way  Down 
East  went  to  St.  Louis  it  played  to  one 
thousand  nine  hundred  dollars  in  nine  per- 
formances, then  for  a  year  it  went  on  ac- 
cumulating fame,  and  when  it  returned  to  St, 
Louis  the  following  year  did  thirteen  thou- 
sand dollars'  worth  of  business  in  one  week. 
On  its  return  to  New  York  this  remarkable 
drama  held  the  boards  at  The  Academy  of 
Music  for  nine  months  at  average  receipts  of 
more  than  ten  thousand  dollars  a  week.  Way 
Down  East  has  played  in  the  city  of  Chicago 
In  the  last  fourteen  or  fifteen  years  an  average 
of  four  weeks  per  year  and  has  never  taken  in 
less  than  ten  thousand  dollars  a  week.  In 
short,  it  cleaned  up  one  hundred  and  twenty 
Ihousand  dollars  in  Chicago  alone.  Boston  has 
netted  this  play  one  hundred  thousand  dollars 
in  fifteen  years.  To  go  back,  its  gross  receipts 
in  Chicago  were  about  six  hundred  thousand 
dollars.  It  is  the  best-paying  piece  of  theatrl- 
$?al  property,  with  the  exception  of  Ben-Hur 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN         159. 

and  The  Old  Homestead,  that  I  know  of.  And 
think  of  it!  Corbett  sold  his  one-quarter  in- 
terest in  this  great  money  maker  for  practically 
a  mess  of  pottage ! 

Although  I  had  abandoned  pugilism,  I  did 
not  wish  to  sever  my  connection  with  the  sport- 
ing world  wholly.  So  I  went  into  the  six-day 
bicycle  racing  business  on  the  side.  The  race 
was  held  the  first  week  in  December  of  each 
year,  and  we  took  in  something  like  one  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars  gross.  We  had  to  pay 
the  Garden  people  forty  per  cent,  of  the  net 
profits  for  the  use  of  the  building. 

Presently  there  arose  a  great  hullabaloo 
against  the  individual  six-day  riding  contest, 
claiming  that  it  was  brutal.  A  bill  was  intro- 
duced in  Albany  against  any  man  riding 
longer  than  twelve  hours  a  day  in  any  kind  of 
a  game.  Theodore  Roosevelt  signed  the  bill, 
much  to  my  surprise,  since  there  was  no  cruelty 
in  the  one-man  effort  at  all.  However,  to  cir- 
cumvent the  new  law,  I  invented  the  idea  of 
riding  in  teams.  Two  men  would  ride  instead 
of  one.    One  would  relieve  the  other,  and  they 


160         THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

would  count  the  combined  scores.  If  one  of 
the  teammates  was  not  holding  his  own,  the 
other  fellow  was  dragged  out  and  put  in  liis 
place.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  not  a  race 
at  all — nothing  more  than  a  farce!  These 
farces  are  pulled  off  on  the  New  York  public 
right  along  and  it  pays  one  hundred  thousand 
dollars  a  week  to  see  them,  "Why  is  it  farci- 
cal?'' you  ask.  Just  go  to  the  Garden  during 
the  contest  and  carefully  observe  conditions. 
You  will  see  that  it  is  absolutely  impossible  as 
the  match  is  conducted,  especially  when  there 
are  seven,  eight  or  nine  teams  of  expert  riders, 
for  one  man  to  gain  a  lap.  How,  then,  can  it 
be  a  race?  Think  it  overl  It  is  actually  a  race 
for  one  mile  stalled  through  a  week. 

The  bicycle  races  in  the  Garden  at  that  time 
created  such  excitement  that  they  led  to  a 
boom  in  cycling.  One  of  the  greatest  expo- 
nents of  this  sport  was  Jimmy  Michael,  a 
young  Welchman,  who  had  come  over  to  the 
States.  Michael  was  not  Bve  feet  high,  yet 
he  could  ride  behind  motor  pace  thirty-one 
miles  an  hour.     There  were  many  of  these 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        161 

riders,  the  principal  ones  besides  Michael  be- 
ing Fred  Titus,  Edward  JSIcDufFee,  Major 
Taylor  and  a  number  of  Frenchmen.  It  was 
a  dangerous  pastime,  and  most  of  the  men  who 
followed  it  are  now  dead.  But  while  the  craze 
lasted  it  was  so  great  that  the  organization 
which  I  conducted  played  to  twenty-seven 
thousand  dollars  gate  money  at  Coney  Island 
in  one  day,  fourteen  thousand  dollars  In 
Boston  and  ten  thousand  dollars  in  PJiila- 
delphia. 

With  the  decline  of  pugilism  in  New  YorE, 
sport  lovers  looked  around  for  another  game 
to  thrill  them.  Wrestling  came  into  vogue 
and  a  gigantic  Turk  named  Yousouf  came 
here  in  charge  of  an  old  wrestler,  one  Anton 
Peiri.  Peiri  brought  the  Turk,  who  could  not 
speak  a  word  of  English,  around  to  see  me, 
and  after  a  good  deal  of  discussion  I  signed  a 
six-months'  contract  agreeing  to  pay  Yousouf 
one  thousand  five  hundred  dollars  a  month  and 
expenses,  and  he  was  to  wrestle  at  any  time  and 
any  place  I  directed.  First  I  matched  him 
against  Roeber,  the  match  to  take  place  in  Mad- 


162        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

ison  Square  Garden.  I  made  the  mistake  of 
not  having  any  railing  or  rope  around  the  ring, 
for  after  the  wrestlers  had  been  on  the  plat- 
form about  ten  minutes  the  Turk  rushed 
If oeber,  shoved  him  over  into  the  audience  and 
so  lost  the  match.  There  were  about  nine  thou- 
sand dollars  in  the  house. 

We  next  planned  a  tour  of  the  country.  St 
tHat  time,  Evan  Lewis,  who  was  known  as  the 
*^strangler,"  was  the  terror  of  all  the  wrestlers. 
I  made  a  match  for  the  Turk  to  go  to  Chicago 
and  meet  the  strangler.  Now  Yousouf  was  a 
verj'-  remarkable  athlete.  He  never  trained  at 
all.  After  each  match,  he  would  eat  two  or 
three  big  steaks.  He  never  took  a  bath,  be- 
lieving that  in  his  dirt  was  his  strength.  One 
of  the  American  trainers  spilled  some  alcohol 
on  him  one  day  and  started  to  rub  him,  but 
Yousouf  sprang  away  from  him  in  supersti- 
tious terror.  The  Turk  relied  on  his  great 
weight  to  wear  his  opponent  out  and  he  was 
tlie  wonder  of  every  American  athlete  who 
came  into  contact  with  him.    Like  many  men 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        168 

of  his  calling  and  caliber,  he  was  cunningly 
distrustful.  He  would  not  j^ut  any  money  in 
the  bank  and  insisted  on  being  paid  in  French 
louis,  which  he  carried  in  a  belt  around  his 
waist. 

On  one  trip  that  he  made  through  the  West 
with  me  he  wrestled  in  Rochester  on  ]Monday 
night  with  a  very  hard  opponent  and  won 
easily;  he  repeated  his  success  the  following 
night  in  Buffalo  tmder  similar  conditions ;  and 
on  Wednesday  went  to  Cleveland  and  met 
Tom  Jenkins,  who  was  considered  the  best 
catch-as-catch-can  wrestler  in  the  United 
States,  and  defeated  him  after  a  vicious  and 
awful  battle.  The  first  fall  took  nearly  an 
Hour  and  three-quarters,  but  the  Turk  threw 
Jenkins  the  second  time  in  about  thirty  min- 
utes, and  then  went  to  a  restaurant  and  ate 
three  steaks.  I  mention  these  facts  to  show 
the  wonderful  recuperative  power  of  the  man. 
From  Cleveland,  we  took  a  train  to  Chicago, 
arriving  there  Thursday  morning,  and  Friday 
night  Yousouf  met  Evan  Lewis,  the  famous 


164        THE    FIGHTINa   MAN 

strangler,  in  the  ring  before  about  twenty 
thousand  people.  The  receipts  were  over  fif- 
teen thousand  dollars. 

The  Turk  had  never  shown  in  any  way  that 
he  knew  anything  about  the  strangle  hold  and 
we  feared  that  Lewis  would  defeat  him  by  that. 
The  Lewis  people  got  us  to  accept  some  man 
from  the  stock-yards  as  referee  and  thousands 
of  dollars  were  bet  that  the  strangler  would 
defeat  the  Turk,  but  the  Turk  just  walked 
over  to  Lewis  and  got  a  strangle  hold  on  him 
standing  up — and  inside  of  three  minutes  had 
his  opponent  screaming  for  help.  The  referee, 
who  was  crooked,  and  who  was  in  the  ring  for 
no  other  purpose  than  to  help  the  Lewis  peo- 
ple, declared  the  Turk  disqualified  for  fouling 
and  denounced  it  as  a  put-up  game.  Instantly 
the  audience  was  in  a  riot.  But  I  put  up  my 
hand  and  when  quiet  was  restored  I  shouted, 
"All  right  1  We  will  give  them  that  match! 
Now  we  will  wrestle  to  satisfy  the  public  and 
allow  them  to  get  something  for  their  money  T* 
After  a  long  harangue,  we  got  the  Lewis 
people  to  agree  to  another  referee  and  the 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        165 

Turk  threw  the  famous  strangler  twice  inside 
of  six  minutes. 

Within  twenty-four  hours  we  defeated 
Charles  Whitman,  another  famous  wrestler, 
in  Cincinnati,  and  then  went  hack  to  New 
York  for  a  return  match  with  Roeber.  I  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  Frank  Sanger  to  rent  me 
the  Metropolitan  Opera  House  for  the  match. 
The  place  was  packed.  All  the  beautiful  boxes 
and  seats  were  occupied  by  the  sports  of  the 
town.  The  match  started  and  the  Turk  was 
rapidly  wearing  Roeber  out,  when  the  latter, 
who  was  something  of  a  boxer,  quit  wrestling 
and  smashed  the  Turk  in  the  face  with  his 
clenched  fist.  Instantly  pandemonium  reigned ; 
seats  were  broken;  and  the  beautiful  opera- 
house  looked  like  the  center  of  a  cyclone* 
Everything  was  swirling  and  raging  and 
roaring;  a  mass  of  humanity  struggled  and 
shrieked  and  anathematized.  I  jumped  into 
the  ring  and  Bob  Fitzsimmons,  who  was  act- 
ing as  Roeber 's  second  and  adviser,  jumped  in 
after  me.  Fitzsimmons  grabbed  hold  of  me 
and  I  hit  him  in  the  jaw.    Then  He  recovered 


166         THE    FIGHTING    MAN* 

— from  his  surprise  more  than  anything  else, 
I  Imagine — and  made  a  rush  at  me  and  I  ex- 
pected to  be  killed  the  next  minute.  But  just 
then  a  big  Irish  policeman  jumped  into  the 
melee  and  shouted,  "Bob,  if  you  lay  a  hand 
on  that  boy,  I'll  kill  you!" 

Fitzsimmons  did  not  lay  a  hand  on  me. 

By  this  time  the  Turk  had  about  four  thou- 
sand dollars  in  French  louis  saved  up  and 
sailed  on  La  Borgoyne  for  France.  There  was 
a  collision  at  sea  and  the  ship  foundered. 
Yousouf's  body  was  recovered  about  a  month 
afterward.  The  fish  had  eaten  away  the  belt 
and  all  his  gold  was  gone!  That  was  the  end 
of  the  "Terrible  Turk." 

By  this  time  Klaw  and  Erlanger,  Alf  Hay- 
man,  Charles  Frohman,  Nixon  and  Zimmer- 
man, and  Rich  and  Harris  got  together  to  cor- 
ral all  the  theaters  in  the  United  States  and 
form  what  was  known  as  the  "theatrical  syn- 
dicate." I  fought  them  for  about  two  years, 
but  as  one  after  another  of  their  opponents 
gave  in,  I  presently  surrendered  and  joined 
them.     Then  there  was  a  great  slump  in  the 


<xt%,\.    ih. 


Marc  Klaw 


ROCKWOOO 


Abraham  L.  Erlanger 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN         16?; 

theatrical  business — just  before  the  beginning 
of  the  great  boom  which  culminated  in  1907. 
Everybody  felt  the  depression.  I  was  lucky, 
however,  because  I  had  a  good  money  maker 
in  Way  Down  East, 

During  the  depression  in  the  theater  busi- 
ness the  Horton  law,  legalizing  bouts,  was 
passed  at  Albany,  and  pugilism  again  began 
to  occupy  the  attention  of  the  New  York  pub- 
lic. This  law  legalized  twenty-round  bouts 
and  almost  every  night  thousands  of  persons 
attended  the  various  athletic  clubs,  and  again 
the  pugilist  and  his  manager  v/ere  rolling  in 
money. 

And  now  it  was  announced  that  James  J. 
Jeffries,  who  had  acted  as  punching  bag  for 
Corbett  at  Carson  City,  had  won  a  number  of 
contests  in  San  Francisco  and  was  looked  on 
as  a  coming  man  out  there.  Jeffries  was  put 
under  the  tutorship  of  William  Delaney,  who 
had  always  been  Corbett's  trainer,  and  was 
brought  to  New  York  to  spar  at  the  Lenox 
Athletic  Club.  He  undertook  to  stop  two  men 
in  ten  rounds  in  one  night.    One  of  these  was 


168         THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

Bob  Armstrong,  the  colored  man,  and  the 
other  was  Steve  O'Donnell.  In  the  first  bout 
— with  Armstrong — Jeffries  broke  his  hand 
and  was  unable  to  go  on  with  the  second  match. 
It  was  so  announced,  but  as  Jeffries  left  the 
ring  he  was  hooted  by  the  audience,  because 
they  thought  he  was  a  "quitter."  I  noticed, 
however,  In  this  bout  that  the  California  boy 
had  strength,  youth,  a  wonderful  left  hand, 
and  that  he  had  Improved  remarkably  since  the 
affair  at  Carson.  I  followed  him  to  his  dress- 
ing-room and  said,  "Let  me  look  at  your 
hand." 

They  had  cut  the  glove  off  and  I  found  that 
the  man  had  broken  his  hand  very  badly. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?'*  said  I,  after  a 
moment. 

"I'm  going  back  to  California,"  said  he ;  "to 
hell  with  New  York!" 

You  see,  his  heart  was  broken. 

But  I  saw  that  he  had  the  makings  of  a 
champion  in  him  and  urged  him  to  stay  east. 
But  he  was  pig-headed  and  went  back  to  the 
coast. 


THE   FIGHTINGS   MAN        169 

The  boxing  game  went  along  beautifully  in 
New  York  and  I  had  so  many  inducements  to 
go  back  into  it  that  one  day  I  said  to  my  wife. 
"I  know  where  there  is  a  man  that  can  be  made 
champion  of  the  world  and  I  think  I  can  get 
Fitzsimmons  to  Bght  him.  I  can  make  a  lot 
of  money.  Will  you  let  me  go  back  into  the 
business?'* 

You  see,  the  theatrical  business  was  not  very 
good,  and  she  thought  a  while,  and  then  she 
said,  "All  rightl" 

So  I  pulled  some  wires  and  got  control  of 
an  enormous  building  down  at  Coney  Island 
— Bauer's  Pavilion — which  was  afterward 
known  as  the  Coney  Island  Athletic  Club.  I 
interested  some  local  people,  two  of  whom  were 
friends  of  Fitzsimmons,  gave  them  some  stock, 
incorporated  the  club,. had  myself  made  presi- 
dent of  it  and  started  in  to  operate. 

Immediately  the  crowds  who  were  running 
the  clubs  in  New  York  found  it  impossible  to 
compete  with  us  and  started  in  to  use  their 
influence  with  the  police  commission — a  four- 
headed  anomaly  at  that  time — to  have  us  put 


170        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

out  of  business.  You  see,  these  clubs  were  con- 
trolled by  Tammany  Hall  politicians  and  tHey 
realized  that  if  I  succeeded  in  opening  a  build- 
ing that  could  hold  between  ten  and  twelve 
thousand  people  Coney  Island  would  get  all 
the  star  contests.  Besides  myself,  the  princi- 
pal stockholder  in  the  Coney  Island  Athletic 
Club  was  a  Brooklyn  politician  named  Alex- 
ander Brown,  which  was  important — as  you 
shall  see.  The  police  board  had  a  meeting  and 
failed  to  grant  us  a  license.  They  didn't  refuse 
in  so  many  words — they  simply  didn't  act  on 
our  application.  It  looked  like  a  "starving 
out"  process.  Another  meeting  of  the  board 
— and  still  no  license !  It  looked  as  if  we  were 
to  be  tied  up  with  this  big  building  and  fifteen 
thousand  dollars  rent  to  pay.  After  the  third 
meeting  of  the  police  board,  during  which  no 
action  was  taken,  I  was  "tipped  off"  that  cer- 
tain New  York  politicians  stood  ready  to  take 
over  our  lease  and  rid  us  of  all  risk. 

By  this  time  Brown's  fighting  blood  was  up 
and  so  was  mine!  He  took  me  over  to  see 
Hugh  McLoughlin,  the  Brooklyn  "boss."  We 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        171 

met  him  in  the  back  room  of  a  cafe  where  he 
made  his  headquarters,  and  Brown  explained 
to  the  boss  that  he  would  never  have  gone  into 
the  scheme  at  all  if  it  had  not  been  on  Mc- 
Loughlin's  assurance  that  the  license  would  be 
granted.  After  a  very  short  conversation  the 
old  man  exclaimed,  "The  license  will  be 
granted  at  the  next  meeting  of  the  police 
board  or  there  will  be  a  split  in  the  Democratic 
party  in  the  state  of  New  York!'^ 

At  the  next  meeting  of  the  board  we  got  our 
license  all  right! 

Jeffries  had  gone  away  into  the  mountains 
hunting  bear,  but  I  located  him  at  Tachapaha, 
California,  and  wired  him :  "If  you  will  come 
east  under  contract  to  me,  I  will  agree  to  make 
you  champion  inside  of  one  year.  Am  quite 
certain  Fitzsimmons  will  agree  to  meet  you!" 

I  also  wired  him  money  to  pay  his  fare  to 
New  York,  and  he  and  Delaney  consented  to 
come. 

I  then  began  to  work  on  Fitzsimmons.  I 
had  his  friends  at  the  club  tell  him  that  I  was 
bringing  a  man  named  Jeffries  on  for  him  to 


172        THE  FIGHTING!  MAN 

knock  out,  that  the  California  boy  was  a  big 
dub,  and  that  Fitzsimmons  would  take  no 
chances  in  going  into  the  ring  with  him.  By 
this  time  Fitzsimmons  had  got  short  of  cash 
and,  like  myself,  had  noted  the  fact  that  a  lot 
of  money  was  being  made  at  the  boxing  con- 
tests in  and  around  New  York,  I  dealt  with 
Fitzsimmons  through  his  brother-in-law,  Mar- 
tin Julian,  who  was  a  very  obstinate  and  pig- 
headed customer.  Finally,  after  weeks  and 
weeks  of  conniving,  scheming,  consultations 
and  meetings,  I  got  lanky  Bob  to  agree  to 
meet  Jeffries  at  the  Coney  Island  Athletic 
Club  for  the  championship  of  the  world,  pro- 
vided I  gave  him  sixty-five  per  cent,  of  the 
boxers'  share  of  the  receipts — win  or  lose. 
"After  all,"  said  he  rather  indulgently,  "that 
fellow  is  only  coming  on  here  to  get  licked  and 
get  a  little  money,  and  will  be  satisfied  with  a 
few  thousand  dollars  T* 

Take  notice  of  the  fact  that  Fitzsimmons 
had  never  seen  Jeffries  I 

They  started  in  to  train,  but  even  then  I  was 
not  sure  Fitzsimmons  would  go  into  the  ring. 


THE   FIGHTING]   MAN        173 

because  every  once  in  a  while  we  had  reports 
about  him  playing  with  a  baby  lion  and  were 
afraid  the  beast  might  bite  his  hand  off  before 
the  match  was  due.  Again,  he  was  constantly 
making  new  demands,  but  we  satisfied  them  all 
and  finally  it  came  to  the  time  for  the  contest. 

This  had  been  the  first  real  championship 
match  that  had  ever  been  held  in  New  York 
City.  In  consequence  there  was  an  enormous 
amount  of  interest  in  the  event  and  the  sale 
of  seats  was  somewhere  in  the  neighborhood 
of  seventy  thousand  dollars.  It  was  a  ter- 
ribly rainy  night  and  the  trains  were  stopped 
or  we  would  have  taken  in  over  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars. 

As  the  date  for  the  fight  drew  near,  I  be- 
gan to  get  a  line  on  Jeffries.  He  came  from 
Pennsylvania  Dutch  stock,  was  very  cautious, 
very  suspicious,  and  in  my  opinion  lacked  tho 
gameness  of  the  other  men  of  the  same  type 
with  whom  I  had  come  in  contact.  Notwith- 
standing the  fact  that  he  had  beaten  quite  a 
number  of  good  men  before  he  came  east, 
he  was  still  very  young  and  inexperienced.    I 


174        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

was  afraid  that  when  he  got  in  the  ring,  the 
coolness  and  experience  of  Fitzsimmons  would 
count;  that  before  Jeffries  got  through  with 
his  fright  Bob  would  have  him  down  and  out. 
So  I  tried  a  little  trick  that  Corbett  had  taught 
me. 

At  about  five  o'clock  on  the  evenings  of  the 
fight  Delaney  and  myself  had  Jeffries  dress 
up  in  a  little  hotel  he  was  stopping  at  on  Surf 
Avenue  and  we  took  him  out  on  the  Coney 
Island  Boulevard  and  walked  him  up  toward 
Brooklyn.  He  was  as  nervous  as  a  cat,  very 
surly  and  lacked  all  the  assurance  that  I  had 
been  accustomed  to  seeing  in  Corbett.  Never- 
theless, he  was  a  good  pupil,  and  so  I  ar- 
ranged this  little  scheme. 

"Now,"  said  I,  "when  you  go  to  the  club- 
house to-night  you'll  find  that  your  dressing- 
room  is  in  a  little  outhouse  right  across  the 
hallway  from  the  room  that  Fitzsimmons  will 
dress  in.  When  you  get  there,  you  are  to 
strip  and  lie  out  on  the  table  to  be  rubbed 
down.  Then  I  will  cross  over  into  Fitzsim- 
mons' room  and  will  call  Julian  out  into  the 


THE    fighting;   man        175 

hallway  and  will  start  to  argue  loudly  with 
him  about  the  rules  to  be  followed  in  the  con- 
test, principally  as  to  whether  you  are  to  break 
clean  or  whether  each  man  is  to  take  care  of 
himself  in  the  breakaways." 

There  are  two  ways  of  doing  this.  When  the 
men  clinched,  the  referee  would  say,  "Break!'* 
and  the  men  would  step  back  themselves.  The 
other  way  was  that  they  would  clinch  and  each 
man  had  to  take  care  of  himself.  If  a  man 
could  strike  a  quick  blow  in  the  clinch,  it  was 
all  right.  There  was  much  dispute  as  to  the 
Marquis  of  Queensbury  rules  in  this  respect. 
In  the  Corbett  and  Sullivan  fight,  the  referee 
said,  "Break!"  and  walked  between  them.  As 
it  is  now,  the  men  were  compelled  to  care  for 
themselves  in  breaking  away,  which  was  good 
for  the  man  that  was  not  clever,  since  he  could 
hit  here,  there  and  everywhere  while  he  was 
clinched. 

I  continued  my  instructions  to  Jeffries.  "I 
will  call  Julian  out  in  the  hallway  and  loudly 
ask  about  these  points.  Fitzsimmons  will  hear 
me,  the  sound  of  my  voice  will  set  him  on 

) 


176        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

edge  and  he  will  probably  come  out  into  the 
hallway  and  engage  in  the  discussion.  Then 
I  will  say  to  Fitzsimmons,  '\Vhat  is  the  use  of 
you  and  me  arguing  this;  come  in  and  talk 
it  over  with  Jeffries.'  And  then  I  will  usher 
him  into  your  room.  He  will  see  you  for  the 
first  time  and  your  appearance  will  be  a  shock 
to  him." 

In  fact,  stripped  and  in  his  fighting  costume, 
Jeffries  was  a  dangerous-looking  brute.  He 
had  long  shaggy  hair  on  his  breast,  big  thick 
jaws  and  all  the  other  attributes  of  the  ideal 
prize-fighter. 

"When  I  get  Fitzsimmons  into  the  room," 
I  went  on,  "I  will  start  to  argue  with  him 
about  the  rules,  and  after  I  have  got  along 
a  way,  you  jump  off  the  table,  grab  him  by 
the  back  of  the  neck,  and  show  him  the  way 
you  understand  the  fight  will  be  conducted. 
Don't  let  him  get  a  word  in  edgewise.  Just 
shove  him  over  against  the  wall — and  that  will 
be  all  that's  necessary!'* 

Jeffries  had  been  listening  like  a  bulldog. 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        177 

and  when  I  finished  speaking  he  said,  "Do 
you  think  this  can  be  done?" 

"We'll  try  it,"  said  I.  "It  wiU  put  fear 
into  his  heart  and  instead  of  your  going  into 
the  ring  scared,  he  will  go  in  scared." 

The  whole  thing  worked  out  perfectly. 
Night  came,  and  at  the  clubhouse  Fitzsim- 
mons  came  to  his  room  just  as  I  had  expected. 
I  called  Julian  out  into  the  hallway  and  started 
to  argue  the  rules  with  him,  and,  as  I  had  pre- 
dicted, Fitzsimmons  came  rushing  out  and 
butted  in.  I  called  him  into  Jeffries'  room 
to  argue  the  matter  with  my  principal,  and 
Jeffries  did  just  as  I  had  instructed  hun  to 
do.  He  jumped  off  his  perch,  rushed  over 
to  Fitzsimmons,  started  In  to  show  him  how 
he  understood  the  rules,  grabbed  him  and  lit- 
erally tossed  him  over  into  a  corner.  And  the 
Cornishman  walked  out  a  few  minutes  later, 
cowed,  demoralized,  whipped  in  the  dressing- 
room  before  he  entered  the  ring! 

When  the  two  men  faced  each  other  in  the 
ring,  Fitzsimmons  was  by  far  the  more  nerv- 


178        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

ous  man  of  the  two.  The  episode  of  the  dress- 
ing-room had  not  only  scared  him,  but  had  put 
confidence  Into  Jeffries.  The  battle  was  really 
held  in  the  dressing-room. 

The  fight  began,  but  not  much  was  done  in 
the  first  round.  Jeffries  sparred  most  of  the 
time.  At  the  beginning  of  the  second,  he  did 
something  that  I  had  never  seen  done  before 
— ^he  hit  Fitzsimmons  with  a  straight  left  and 
knocked  him  out.  It  was  all  over  then.  Fitz- 
simmons got  up  with  difficulty,  realizing  that 
he  was  up  against  a  wonderful  opponent.  At 
the  end  of  the  sixth  round  Fitzsimmons  landed 
what  he'd  been  trying  for  all  these  rounds  to 
land — ^hls  famous  solar  plexus  punch.  He  hit 
Jeffries  right  in  the  proper  spot,  but  it  never 
feezed  him  a  bit.  Fitzsimmons  was  greatly 
surprised  at  this,  but  quite  astounded  when  he 
saw  Jeffries,  apparently  undisturbed,  walk 
back  to  his  corner  at  the  end  of  the  sixth  round. 
His  great  blow  had  not  worked.  Fitzsimmons 
walked  back  to  his  comer  greatly  dejected. 
Much  depended  on  him.  At  all  of  these  con- 
tests there  was  a  tremendous  amount  of  money 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        179 

bet,  and  now  they  were  laying  three  or  four 
to  one  on  Fitzsimmons. 

As  I  was  passing  through  the  audience 
earlier  in  the  night,  Jesse  Lewisohn  stopped 
me  and  told  me  that  he  had  bet  twenty  thou- 
sand dollars  on  Fitzsimmons,  and  asked  me 
what  I  thought  of  it.  I  told  him  that  Fitz- 
simmons would  be  beaten  that  night,  and  Lew- 
isohn hedged  out  twenty  thousand  dollars  be- 
tween that  time  and  the  time  the  men  entered 
the  ring! 

Fitzsimmons  was  beaten,  Jeffries  was  cham- 
pion, and  the  same  old  story  happened  again. 
Jeffries,  the  victor,  became  unpopular,  and 
Fitzsimmons,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  knew 
what  popularity  was.  We  put  Jeffries  in  a 
play  called  The  Man  from  the  West^  and,  al- 
though he  was  a  fairly  good  actor,  the  public 
would  not  go  to  see  him.  Presently  we  took 
him  to  England,  but  it  was  impossible  to  over- 
come the  British  prejudice  against  what  they 
considered  an  anomaly,  if  not  a  paradox — a 
prize-fighter  playing  legitimate  drama !  They 
would  have  none  of  Jeffries.    But  he  got  re- 


180        THE    fighting:   MAN 

venge  on  the  public  over  there  by  knocking 
out  an  EngHshman  every  night.  He  knocked 
out  thirty  Englishmen  in  thirty  nights. 

Jeffries  would  say,  "How  much  in  the  house 
to-night.  Bill?"  and  I  would  say,  "About  five 
pounds." 

Then  he  would  say,  "See  if  you  can't  get  two 
or  three  more  of  these  bluffers." 

They  were  mixed-ale  fighters  and  Jeffries 
,  certainly  made  short  work  of  them. 

On  another  occasion  I  saw  Jeffries  make 
short  work  of  a  man.  It  was  in  Detroit,  and 
they  had  put  a  dangerous  fellow  up  against 
him.  We  were  getting  one  thousand  two  hun- 
dred dollars  for  the  night.  It  was  the  only 
time  I  ever  saw  him  do  the  knock-out  business. 
The  bell  rang  and  he  walked  over  to  his  man 
— ^just  one  shot,  and  it  was  over  in  a  minute! 

"V^Tiile  the  English  people  would  not  have 
Jeffries  at  all,  the  Parisians  went  wild  over 
him.  He  appeared  there  and  they  paid  him 
seven  thousand  five  hundred  francs  for  the 
week. 

To  switch  back  to  the  main  line  of  the  story. 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        181 

Tom  Sharkey,  who  had  fought  a  draw  with 
Jeffries  in  San  Francisco,  was  now  matched 
to  fight  him  again.  But  Jeffries,  like  his  jpre- 
decessors,  developed  ring  fear.  In  fact,  so 
eager  was  he  to  avoid  the  fight  that  a  week 
before  it  was  to  take  place  he  claimed  to  have 
broken  something  in  his  elbow,  and  the  thing 
had  to  be  postponed.  But  it  was  no  use ;  fight- 
ing was  the  only  way  he  could  make  any 
money,  and  notwithstanding  his  efforts  to  side- 
step the  fight,  we  got  him  into  the  ring. 

In  this  contest  moving  pictures  were  taken 
for  the  first  time  at  night.  The  American  Bio- 
graph  Company  undertook  the  job.  Enor- 
mous lights  were  hung  right  down  over  the 
ring  and  the  temperature  while  the  match  was 
going  on — for  twenty-five  rounds — was  a  hun- 
dred and  ten.  No  other  two  men  in  the  world 
could  have  stood  it.  But  these  fighters  were 
wonderful  specimens  of  brawn  and  muscle. 
Sharkey  was  small  and  stocky  and  Jeffries  was 
built  just  like  a  big  Newfoundland  dog. 

We  had  attempted  to  take  pictures  of  the 
Fitzsimmons-Jeffries  contest  at  Coney  Island. 


1821        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

We  had  paid  a  man  five  thousand  dollars  to 
make  the  experiment  with  the  lights.  But  at 
the  last  moment  the  machine  failed  and  we  lost 
our  money. 

The  Biograph  Company,  however,  succeed- 
ed, but  at  a  terrible  cost  to  the  men  who 
had  to  fight  under  such  conditions.  It  was 
the  first  time  a  motion  picture  had  ever  been 
taken  by  artificial  light.  Since  then  the  use 
of  such  a  light  for  this  purpose  has  become 
very  great.  The  invention  of  the  Cooper- 
Hewitt  light  and  the  Kliegel  light  has  made 
it  possible  to  obtain  perfect  daylight  in  the 
darkest  room.  In  fact  sometimes  better  effects 
can  be  got  by  the  use  of  this  lighting  than 
from  sunlight.  It  is  very  hard  on  the  actor  to 
work  under  this  artificial  light.  It  is  the  cause 
of  many  operations  on  the  eyes.  In  fact,  many 
motion-picture  actors  lose  their  sight  because 
of  it.  The  light  we  used  at  the  time  of  the 
fight  contest  was  more  of  a  white  light.  You 
can  moderate  the  Cooper-Hewitt  light.  It 
gives  a  more  natural  light  to  the  face  than  our 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        183 

light  did.  And,  strange  to  say,  the  camera  went 
wrong  at  the  most  important  time,  during  the 
last  round  of  the  contest.  Jeffries'  glove 
fell  off  in  this  round  and  he  fought  two  or 
three  minutes  with  a  bare  fist,  which  was 
claimed  to  be  a  violation  of  the  rules. 

It  was  a  wonderful  battle!  There  was  no 
knock-out ;  not  even  a  knock-down.  The  deci- 
sion was  given  to  Jeffries  on  points.  Nobody 
could  have  complained  much  if  the  match  had 
been  declared  a  draw,  as  Sharkey  put  up  a 
wonderful  fight — so  wonderful  that  after  he 
was  taken  back  to  his  dressing-room  that  night 
it  was  found  that  two  of  his  ribs  were  broken. 
He  traveled  in  a  plaster  cast  for  a  year  after- 
ward. 

After  this  match  Corbett  approached  me 
and  begged  to  be  allowed  to  box  Jeflfries. 

"I  know  I  have  not  got  a  chance.  Bill,"  said 
he,  "but  I'm  in  trouble  and  need  the  money. 
We  will  draw  a  big  house,  and  the  loser's  end 
will  be  good  enough  for  me." 

So,  for  old  times'  sake,  I  made  the  match. 


184        THE    FIGHTING    MAN, 

Jeffries  resented  it,  however.  He  knew  of  mv 
long  friendship  for  Corbett,  and  feared  some 
kind  of  a  job.  His  suspicions  were  justified, 
in  a  way,  although  I  was  innocent.  For  it 
transpired  in  a  month  or  so  that  my  old  friend 
Corbett  had  deceived  me.  For  six  months  be- 
fore this  he  had  been  working  quietly  in  a 
gymnasium,  restoring  himself  to  condition. 
You  see,  through  lack  of  exercise  in  the  sa- 
loon business,  he  had  become  "run  down," 
and  everybody  thought  he  was  a  physical 
wreck.  When  the  match  was  made,  Corbett 
promptly  left  for  Lakewood  and  there  he  did 
the  marvelous — ^he  remade  himself!  He  was 
thirty-six,  I  think. 

Jeffries  heard  the  rumors  of  Corbett's  won- 
derful rejuvenation,  and  became  more  and 
more  suspicious.  He  was  training  at  my  house 
at  Allenhurst,  and  during  the  last  week  he 
refused  to  eat  the  food  that  was  put  before 
him  until  some  one  else  had  tasted  it.  Jeffries' 
attitude — in  this  and  other  matters — caused  a 
decided  coolness  between  us.  His  suspicion 
was  so  groundless,  so  unreasonable.    He  owed 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        185 

everything  to  me  and  I  owed  nothing  to  him. 
But  it  was  his  nature  to  be  suspicious — that's 
all. 

By  this  time  Jeffries  had  got  an  idea  that 
he  was  a  wonderful  boxer.  He  proposed  to 
beat  Corbett,  who  was  supposed  to  be  the  Sn- 
est  boxer  in  the  ring,  at  his  own  game;  that  is, 
outbox  him  at  long  range.  You  see,  Thomas 
Ryan,  the  middleweight  champion,  who  had 
almost  Corbett's  renown  as  a  boxer,  had  taught 
Jeffries  how  to  spar,  and  had  persuaded  the 
big  fellow  that  he  was  capable  of  going  into 
the  ring  and  defeating  Corbett  on  a  scientific 
proposition. 

Strange  to  say,  the  receipts  for  this  contest 
were  the  smallest  of  any  big  battle — of  the 
kind — that  had  ever  been  pulled  off  in  New 
York — some  thirty-five  thousand  dollars.  The 
rumor  had  got  into  the  air  that  the  whole  thing 
was  to  be  faked,  and  the  public  believed  it. 
Furthermore,  they  could  not  see  how  Corbett 
had  a  chance.  But  to  show  how  square  the 
whole  thing  was,  I  made  bets  on  the  fight  at 
the  end  of  the  first,  second,  fourth  and  tenth 


186        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

rounds,  and  when  the  gong  sounded  finally,  I 
stood  to  lose  seven  thousand  five  hundred  dol- 
lars that  I  had  bet  on  my  man.  In  fact,  1 
thought  Jeffries  would  win  in  one  round! 

When  the  men  got  into  the  ring  Corbett's 
condition  amazed  everybody.  He  looked  as 
good,  if  not  better,  than  when  he  first  fought 
Sullivan.  Jeffries,  following  the  instructions 
of  Ryan,  started  to  spar,  but  Corbett  made 
him  look  like  a  novice — made  him  look  a  big- 
ger fool  than  he'd  made  Sullivan  look  some 
years  before.  He  jabbed  and  punched  him 
when  and  where  he  pleased,  and  about  the  end 
of  the  tenth  round  got  himself  together  and 
hit  Jeffries  one  on  the  point  of  the  jaw.  When 
he  did  that,  the  whole  giant  frame  shook,  and 
I  was  afraid  that  he  was  going  down.  But 
that  was  the  end  of  Corbett's  speed.  He  held 
his  own  up  to  the  sixteenth  round,  and  then 
he  began  to  fail.  It  was  youth  against  age. 
Along  about  the  tenth  round,  when  Jeffries 
had  the  worst  of  it,  I  spoke  to  him  in  his  cor- 
ner and  told  him  to  stop  sparring.  Ryan,  Cor- 
bett's  second,  told  me  to  get  out  of  the  corner. 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        ISf 

I  did  so,  but  quietly  sent  for  a  captain  of  po- 
lice who  was  an  old  friend  of  mine  and  who 
came  and  sat  behind  me  in  the  corner.  The 
twentieth  round  came  and  Jeffries  was  still 
sparring.  Then  I  got  a  well-grounded  hint 
from  the  other  side  of  the  ring  that  if  the  con- 
test went  twenty-five  rounds  Referee  White 
would  declare  it  a  draw.  Such  a  thing  would 
mean  absolute  ruin  to  Jeffries,  so  at  the  end 
of  the  twentieth  round  I  jumped  into  the  cor- 
ner and  said  to  him,  "You  will  have  to  fight. 
Shut  your  eyes  and  hit  him!  You  can  see  that 
he  is  stalling  you!" 

Ryan  interfered  again,  but  I  indicated  my 
police  captain  friend  and  told  the  trainer  that 
if  he  didn't  keep  his  mouth  shut  I  would  have 
him  thrown  out  of  the  club. 

In  one  more  round  it  was  over.  Following 
my  advice,  Jeffries  bored  right  in  and  licked 
Corbett — knocked  him  out  coldl  I  was  the 
first  one  to  pick  Corbett  up!  "Sorry,  Jim," 
said  I,  "but  it's  business !" 

About  this  time  Governor  Roosevelt  signed 
a  bill  repealing  the  Horton  law.     He  left  it 


188        THE    FIGHTING   MAX 

open  for  three  or  four  months,  however,  and 
during  that  period  there  was  a  great  rush  for 
contests.  Some  politicians  got  control  of  Mad- 
ison Square  Garden  and  for  the  first  time  that 
vast  auditorium  was  used  for  pugilism.  Enor- 
mous receipts  were  taken  in.  Corbett  and  Mc- 
Coy fought  what  was  said  to  be  a  fake  fight, 
which  drew  sixty-six  thousand  dollars.  The 
Fitzsimmons- Sharkey  contest  had  realized 
something  in  the  neighborhood  of  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars,  while  the  Fitzsimmons-Ruhlin 
match  drew  forty  thousand  dollars. 

But  Jeffries  would  not  take  on  anybody  else. 

Once  again  professional  pugilism  went  out 
of  business  in  New  York.  The  men  who  were 
promoting  the  fights,  because  of  their  greed, 
killed  the  goose  that  laid  the  golden  egg.  The 
Corbett-]McCoy  farce  was  an  awful  blow  to  the 
sport.  The  nerve  of  these  two  fighters  doing 
nothing  but  a  friendly  sparring  bout  for  sixty- 
six  thousand  dollars  was  more  than  the  public 
would  stand  for.  Night  after  night  fake  fights 
were  pulled  off  all  over  the  city,  and  would 
probably  be  going  on  now  if  Governor  Roose- 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        189 

velt  had  not  signed  the  bill.  I  have  no  doubt 
that  the  governor's  act  was  due  entirely  to  the 
way  the  sport  had  degenerated,  for  he  himself 
was  an  enthusiastic  athlete  and  boxer. 

Through  all  my  experience  with  Jeffries  I 
did  not  travel  with  him  at  all.  Therefore  it 
did  not  interfere  with  my  business.  I  was 
making  six  or  eight  productions  a  year  on 
Broadway.  It  was  not  an  uncommon  thing 
for  me  to  manage  a  championship  contest  at 
Coney  Island  one  night  and  make  a  first-class 
production  on  [Broadway  the  next.  And  so 
my  reputation  as  a  theater  man  was  growing, 
in  spite  of  my  connection  with  sporting  events. 

The  next  man  that  got  after  Jeffries  was 
!Gus  Ruhlin,  who  also  had  fought  a  draw  with 
the  champion  in  the  early  days  at  San  Fran- 
cisco, The  new  match  was  brought  about  in 
a  curious  way  and  served  to  show  how  high- 
brow art  is  not  above  letting  low-brow  art  pull 
it  out  of  a  hole — financially.  It  seems  that 
the  public-spirited  citizens  of  Cincinnati  had 
decided  to  give  an  immense  musical  festival, 
and  that  they  had  lost  about  fifty  thousand  dol- 


190        THE    FIGHTING   MAX 

lars  on  the  enterprise.  The  Sangerfest  Build- 
ing, which  had  been  especially  put  up  for  this 
affair,  was  a  large  circular  structure,  admir- 
ably suited  to  a  boxing  contest.  So  one  of 
the  aforesaid  public-spirited  citizens  of  Cin- 
cinnati conceived  that  it  would  be  a  wonderful 
idea  for  them  to  recoup  their  losses  by  bring- 
ing Jeffries  and  Ruhlin  to  Cincinnati  for  a 
twenty-round  battle.  Julius  Fleischman,  the 
mayor,  and  prominent  among  the  sangerfest 
people,  gave  the  leading  citizens  his  word  that 
he  would  permit  just  this  one  boxing  contest 
in  order  for  them  to  get  even.  You  see,  there 
was  a  law  out  there  that  prohibited  a  prize- 
fight, but  not  a  boxing  match. 

However,  when  they  came  to  me  about  the 
contest  I  said,  "You  will  have  to  give  us  five 
thousand  dollars  in  cash  to  cover  lost  time  and 
training  expenses." 

They  agreed  to  my  terms,  deposited  the 
money  and  we  went  there.  But  no  sooner  did 
the  thing  get  out  than  there  was  a  great  hulla- 
baloo. The  aforesaid  public-spirited  men  had 
reckoned   without  the   governor.     Nash   was 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        191 

chief  executive  at  the  time  and  he  declared 
that  the  contest  should  not  take  place  in  the 
state  of  Ohio.  The  sangerfest  people  insisted 
that  it  should,  and  engaged  the  finest  counsel 
in  town.  We  were  arrested  and  tried  for  aid- 
ing, abetting  or  promoting  a  boxing  bout  in 
violation  of  the  state  law.  Governor  Harmon 
appeared  for  the  prosecution.  We  had  a  per- 
fectly good-natured  trial,  the  whole  thing  hing- 
ing on  what  was  the  difference  between  a  box- 
ing contest  and  a  prize-fight.  Jeffries  and 
Ruhlin  stood  up  and  gave  the  learned  gentle- 
men of  the  law  all  kinds  of  exhibitions  of  passes 
and  blows  and  counters  and  breakaways.  I  was 
the  last  witness,  and  it  seems  that  the  question 
had  resolved  itself  down  to  this — ^that  in  a 
prize-fight,  the  men  hit  hard  and  with  mali- 
cious intent,  willing  to  disable,  and  even  tak- 
ing the  chance  of  killing  their  opponent,  while 
a  boxing  contest  was  a  scientific  exhibition, 
with  no  intent  on  either  side  to  maim  or  hurt. 
Madden,  who  was  representing  Ruhlin,  had 
claimed  that  the  men  were  to  go  into  the  ring 
good-naturedly,  and  he  told,  in  a  perfectly  ri- 


192        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

diculous  and  suave  way,  that  it  was  a  friendly 
affair.  But  when  I  got  on  the  stand  the  judge 
turned  to  me  and  said,  "I  want  you  to  answer 
me  as  man  to  man.  If  Jeffries  goes  into  the 
ring  to  meet  Ruhlin,  will  his  blows  be  friendly 
or  will  he  hit  as  hard  as  he  can?" 

I  said,  "He  is  going  into  the  ring  to  3o 
just  as  much  damage  as  he  can,  and  be  is  go- 
ing to  try  to  hurt  Mr.  Ruhlin  just  as  much  as 
he  can!" 

On  that  the  judge  decided  that  it  was  a 
prize-fight  and  not  a  boxing  contest;  the 
sangerfest  committee  handed  us  five  thousand 
dollars;  we  shook  the  dust  of  Cincinnati  from 
our  feet ;  a  few  months  later  I  dropped  out  of 
the  game! 

After  the  stopping  of  boxing  in  New  York 
City  by  the  passage  of  the  Horton  Law,  Jef- 
fries went  back  to  San  Francisco,  where  ring 
contests  had  become  immensely  popular.  There 
he  came  under  the  management  of  a  young 
Calif ornian  named  James  Cofforth. 

Jeffries  met  Fitzsimmons  for  a  second  time 
at  San  Francisco,  July  25, 1902.    For  the  first 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        193 

six  rounds  it  looked  as  if  Jeif  ries  had  met  his 
Waterloo,  for  instead  of  being  outboxed  by  the 
big  Californian,  Fitzsimmons  showed  remark- 
able power  and  simply  pounded  Jeffries  into  a 
jelly  in  the  early  part  of  the  contest.  But  at 
the  end  of  eight  rounds  Jeffries  knocked  the 
old  man  out.  Fitzsimmons  at  this  time  was 
about  forty-three  years  old. 

Then  Corbett  asked  for  another  chance  at 
Jeffries  and  the  match  was  arranged  to  take 
place  in  San  Francisco,  August  14,  1903.  In 
this  match  Jeffries  really  outboxed  the  "Pom- 
padour" and  won  in  ten  rounds. 

Tired  of  the  ring,  Jeffries  announced  his  re- 
tirement and  settled  in  Los  Angeles.  But 
about  this  time  a  Canadian  named  Thomas 
Burns  challenged  him  and  Jeffries  waived  the 
championship  to  him. 

Burns  then  went  to  England  and  defeated 
everybody  there,  but  he  was  afraid  to  meet  a 
black  man  named  Jack  Johnson  who  had  fol- 
lowed him  to  England.  So  Burns  immediately 
jumped  to  Australia.  Then  Johnson  accepted 
five  thousand  dollars  and  expenses  to  go  to 


194         THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

Australia  and  meet  Burns.  The  contract  was 
made  with  an  Australian  named  Hugh  ^Icln- 
tosh.  The  bout  took  place  in  Australia.  John- 
son defeated  Burns  in  thirteen  rounds.  Then 
Johnson  returned  to  America  and  commenced 
to  taunt  Jeffries,,  who  was  living  in  affluence 
and  peace  in  Los  Angeles.  He  challenged 
him.  The  big  Californian  by  this  time  had 
grown  very  stout ;  he  weighed  over  three  hun- 
dred pounds.  But  he  could  not  stand  for  a 
black  man's  taunts. 

Johnson  was  misbehaving  himself  and  mak- 
ing a  lot  of  enemies  and  the  public  wanted  him 
to  be  beaten.  They  felt  that  Jeffries  was  the 
only  one  who  could  do  it.  I  met  Jeffries  at  the 
American  Theater  in  New  York  where  he  was 
giving  training  exhibitions.  I  looked  at  him 
in  astonishment.  I  said,  "Do  you  really  intend 
to  meet  Johnson  ?" 

"Yes,"  said  he. 

'*If  you  do,  you'll  regret  it  as  long  as  you 
live,  for  Johnson  will  surely  beat  you,"  said  I. 

Jeffries  never  spoke  to  me  after  that. 

Then  came  the  battle  between  Jeffries  and 
Johnson  at  Carson,  July  4,  1910.    It  drew  two 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        195 

hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  in  cash,  the 
largest  gate  receipts  ever  drawn  by  a  pugilis- 
tic contest.  Jeffries  should  never  have  entered 
the  ring.  He  was  in  no  condition  to  do  so.  It 
Is  more  than  likely  that  Johnson  promised  to 
stand  for  defeat.  If  so,  he  broke  his  word ;  he 
double-crossed  Jeffries.  Johnson  was  as  afraid 
as  a  snake  in  the  first  round,  but  when  he  found 
he  was  facing  only  a  shadow  of  Jeffries'  former 
self  he  played  with  him  like  a  kitten  for  thir- 
teen rounds. 

Everybody  remembers  the  bitter  race  feel- 
ing that  followed  the  Johnson  victory  at 
Carson.  The  white  people  of  the  country 
were  bitterly  disappointed,  the  blacks  were  un- 
wisely exultant.  This  feeling  manifested  it- 
self throughout  the  whole  country  the  night 
following  the  fight  in  innumerable  individual 
encounters  and  smallrsized  riots. 

As  a  result,  many  states  passed  laws  prohib- 
iting the  meeting  of  a  white  man  and  a  black 
man  in  the  ring.  And  subsequently  a  national 
law  was  passed  prohibiting  even  a  motion-pic- 
ture reproduction  of  any  such  a  mixed-color 
contest  in  the  United  .States.     That  explains 


196        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

why  the  pictures  of  the  Willard-Johnson  fight 
at  Havana  were  never  shown  in  the  United 
States. 

Every  one  knows  how  Johnson's  victory 
turned  his  head;  how  he  married  a  white 
woman;  how  that  unfortunate  creature  com- 
mitted suicide;  how  he  married  another  white 
woman ;  how  he  violated  the  white  slave  laws  in 
Chicago  and  was  arrested  and  held  under 
thirty  thousand  dollars  bail.  Every  one  knows 
how  the  black  champion  jumped  his  bond  and 
went  to  Europe.  All  of  which  brought  upon 
his  foolish  head  a  storm  of  public  abuse. 

In  both  Paris  and  London  Johnson  carried 
on  the  same  kind  of  wild  orgies  that  had  made 
him  so  disreputable  here.  He  finally  reached 
the  end  of  his  finances  and  in  a  vain  attempt  to 
recoup  himself  made  the  match  with  Frank 
Moran,  who  he  thought  would  prove  an  easy 
mark.  I  was  in  Paris  at  the  time  and  cabled 
the  following  account  of  the  fight  to  the  New 
York  American: 

"Paris,  June  27, 1914. — It  was  a  second-rate 


COPYRIGHT,  UNDERWOOD  A  UNDERWOOD 

Jess  Willard  (on  right)   and  his  manager 


UNOINWOOO  A  UMDIMWOOO 


Jack  Johnson 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        197 

exhibition  between  two  mixed-ale  fighters. 
That's  my  opinion. 

"Johnson  and  Moran  were  misnamed  fight- 
ers to-night. 

"Had  the  affair  been  held  in  New  York  the 
spectators  would  have  stopped  the  disgraceful 
bout  in  ten  rounds.  Not  one  effective  blow 
was  struck  by  either  man  during  the  entire 
contest. 

"There  was  never  the  suspicion  of  a  jar, 
much  less  a  knock-down. 

"The  spectacle  of  a  world's  champion,  supe- 
rior in  weight,  science,  experience  and  strength, 
clinging  to  a  smaller  antagonist,  expressing  in 
every  move  and  appealing  glance  his  yearning 
for  the  final  tap  of  the  gong — this  was  Johnson 
in  the  last  three  rounds. 

"Moran  did  his  best  in  the  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  rounds  to  gain  at  least  a  draw,  but 
his  very  exertions  so  tired  him  as  to  make  his 
appearance  in  the  twentieth  round  pitiful. 

"Moran  was  gone,  staggering  about  the  ring 
like  a  drunken  man  swinging  blindly  at  thin 
air. 


198        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

"Johnson  was  in  even  worse  condition,  his 
sole  efforts  were  to  lean  on  the  groping  white 
man.  Had  either  of  them  been  even  good  sec- 
ond-raters, a  knock-out  would  have  been  inevi- 
table. 

"Johnson  was  so  tired  that  he  completely 
forgot  even  his  ideas  of  defense,  and  it  was 
only  Moran's  exhaustion  that  saved  the  negro 
from  being  knocked  out. 

"Johnson  has  literally  defended  the  title  suc- 
cessfully— a  feat  never  before  accomplished  by 
a  man  of  his  age  in  the  history  of  the  ring.  iBut 
this  is  all  he  accomplished. 

"Never  once  did  he  inflict  punishment  on 
Moran  to  make  that  worthy  in  the  least  dis- 
turbed. 

"A  straight  left  and  the  old-time  right  up- 
percut  in  clinches  were  all  Johnson  had  to  offer 
and  the  results  of  these  blows  were  merely 
abrasions  on  the  left  eye  and  the  bridge  of  the 
nose. 

^Johnson  entered  Tod  Sloan's  saloon  this 
afternoon  and  announced  he  had  $10,000  to  bet 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        199 

at  even  money  that  he  would  knock  out  Moran 
in  ten  rounds. 

"When  I  announced  my  willingness  to  take 
the  bet,  Johnson  said  he  didn't  have  the  money 
with  him  but  would  go  get  it.  He  went,  but 
he  didn't  come  back. 

"^ly  opinion  is,  the  reason  Johnson  was  able 
to  break  every  tradition  of  the  prize  ring  by 
staying  twenty  rounds  to-night  is  that  Johnson 
is  the  greatest  defensive  fighter  the  world  has 
ever  seen. .  Naturally  it  takes  less  out  of  a  man 
to  stand  still  and  let  the  other  man  do  the  work 
than  actually  to  fight.  Even  so,  there  are  half 
a  dozen  white  men  and  at  least  one  black  man 
who  could  have  put  this  waiting  champion  to 
the  floor  for  the  count  to-night. 

"It  must  be  remembered  Moran  inflicted  not 
one  telling  blow,  yet  the  negro  could  hardly 
stand  up  after  the  last  round. 

"Carpentier  proved  a  very  fair  referee,  but 
in  my  opinion  could  have  called  the  bout  a 
draw  without  doing  Johnson  the  slightest  in- 
justice.   Not  so  much  that  Johnson  earned  a 


200        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

draw,  but  that  Johnson  most  certainly  earned 
nothing. 

"This  is  what  I  base  my  opinion  on  for  a  *dis- 
honorable  draw.' 

"This  suits  the  fight  better  than  any  other 
term  I  can  think  of. 

"Even  Paris,  fight  mad  as  it  is,  has  had  its 
fill  of  Johnson  as  a  result  of  to-night's  dis- 
graceful showing. 

"I  want  to  go  on  record  now  as  saying  that 
the  next  man  who  meets  the  negro  will  either 
knock  him  out  or  suffer  ignominy  of  the  most 
humiliating  kind.  Johnson  was  in  as  good 
condition  as  a  man  of  his  age  could  hope  to  be, 
but  ten  rounds  is  as  far  as  he  can  go  well. 

"Moran's  condition  was  all  that  I  expected, 
but  the  poor  boy  doesn't  know  what  hands  are 
for. 

"The  pictures  will  prove  this  the  most  dis- 
graceful contest  for  a  world's  championship 
ever  held." 

Johnson  owed  so  much  money  in  Paris  that 
the  receipts  that  were  taken  in  for  the  Johnson- 


THE   FIGHTING   MAN        201 

Moran  fight  were  seized  upon  by  the  various 
French  creditors  and  neither  he  nor  Moran 
ever  received  a  cent.  That  left  him  still  in  need 
of  money  and  rendered  it  necessary  for  him  to 
meet  some  other  man.  Numerous  promoters  in 
the  United  States  commenced  to  figure  on  the 
possibility  of  bringing  him  back  to  this  country, 
but  the  government  would  not  allow  it. 

The  promoters  finally  picked  a  big  cowboy 
named  Jesse  Willard  to  meet  Johnson.  Wil- 
lard  was  the  biggest  man  who  ever  appeared  in 
the  prize  ring.  He  was  six  feet  five  inches  and 
weighed  about  two  hundred  and  forty  pounds. 
He  was  a  dean  liver,  temperate,  raised  in  the 
open  air. 

In  arranging  for  the  battle,  Johnson  insisted 
he  was  to  receive  thirty  thousand  dollars.  Wil- 
lard was  willing  to  take  whatever  he  could  get. 
An  attempt  was  made  to  bring  the  bout  off  at 
Juarez,  Mexico.  But  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment threatened  that  if  Johnson  came  to 
Juarez  he  would  be  seized  and  brought  back 
here  for  trial,  as  the  president  of  Mexico  had 
agreed  to  give  him  up.     Finally  it  was  ar- 


E02        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

ranged  that  the  contest  was  to  take  place  in 
Havana. 

We  all  know  what  happened. 

I  was  at  French  Lick  at  the  time  of  this 
event  and  sent  the  following  wire  to  The  Amer- 
ican: 

^Trench  Lick,  Ind.,  April  5,  1915.— *Jack' 
Johnson  made  the  finest  fight  of  his  career  at 
Havana  to-day,  when  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight 
he  met  a  giant  ten  years  his  junior,  possessed 
of  more  strength  and  a  sort  of  rugged  science 
that  was  bound  to  tell  in  a  long  battle. 

"Johnson,  in  forcing  the  jSghting  throughout 
and  succeeding  in  staying  twenty-six  rounds  at 
his  age  with  a  man  of  Willard's  size,  proved 
his  gameness  and  boxing  ability  and  the  right 
to  have  held  the  championship  title,  which  he  so 
loved.  All  talk  of  'fake'  is  ridiculous  and  only 
lessens  the  credit  of  a  fine  victory  by  a  clean, 
decent  and  honest  athlete. 

"I  so  surely  predicted  Johnson's  defeat: 
First,  because  youth  must  win  over  age  in  a 
contest  where  strength  applies;  second,  T  knew 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        208 

that  Willard  was  just  the  type  of  man  to  do 
the  job. 

"We  had  nothing  but  the  bare  result  here  at 
French  Lick.  I  venture  to  state,  however,  that 
to-day's  narrative  shows  that  the  uppercut 
served  of  little  purpose  against  Willard. 
Frank  ISIoran  blocked  it  last  summer  in  Paris. 
I  saw  that  match,  and  !Moran  would  have  won 
if  the  contest  had  gone  forty-five  rounds. 

"Willard  at  his  best. 

"Johnson  in  his  whole  career  never  met  as 
good  a  man  as  Willard  was  to-day.  Jeffries 
never  should  have  met  him,  and  would  not  have 
done  so  but  for  the  great  financial  inducements 
offered.  In  his  best  days  Jeffries  would  have 
made  mincemeat  of  Johnson. 

"Boxers  at  their  best,  like  Fitzsimmons,  Cor- 
bett,  Slavin,  Maher,  Jim  Hall  and  others, 
would  have  beaten  him.  Johnson  was  the 
greatest  master  of  defense  that  the  ring  has 
known  in  my  time,  but  he  lacked  attack. 

"Johnson  picked  them  carefully,  and  built 
up  his  record  with  fine  ability,  but  this  time  he 
picked.wrong.  He  was  sadly  in  need  of  money. 


204.        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

driven  from  one  country  to  another,  constantly 
in  fear  of  arrest.  Never  having  seen  Willard, 
and  knowing  that  'Gunboat'  Smith,  whom  Car- 
pentier  had  defeated  in  London,  had  obtained 
a  decision  over  Willard,  he  marked  him  easy, 
and  so  went  to  his  Waterloo. 

"If  Johnson  had  ever  seen  Willard  perform 
in  the  ring,  the  championship  title  would  still 
be  in  his  hands,  for  he  was  proud  of  it,  and  I 
think  he  would  die  to  keep  it. 

"Victory  boost  to  game, 

"I  think  Willard's  victory  a  great  art  of  self- 
defense.  I  have  known  him  to  be  an  honest, 
kindly,  sincere  fellow,  and  I  can  safely  predict 
that  while  he  holds  his  title  he  will  be  a  credit  to 
the  game. 

"Johnson  was  the  peer  of  his  race,  and  in  de- 
feating him  Willard  has  ended  a  dangerous 
chapter  in  heavyweight  pugilistic  history  that 
should  never  be  rewritten. 

"The  fight  to-day  was  the  longest  Heavy 
championship  fight  under  Marquis  of  Queens- 
bury  rules  on  record/' 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        205 

Bo  passed  Jack  Johnson,  a  black  man  who 
might  have  done  his  race  more  good  than 
[Booker  T,  Washington  or  anybody  else.  If 
Johnson  had  had  the  executive  ability,  the 
mental  caliber,  the  nature  or  the  disposition  of 
Corbett,  he  would  have  gone  down  in  history 
as  one  of  the  greatest  men  the  negro  race  has 
ever  produced.  A  negro  never  could  hope  to 
be  president,  governor,  or  even  mayor.  But 
next  to  that,  to  be  the  best  fighter  in  the  world, 
the  supreme  physical  organ  of  the  world,  was 
a  great  heritage  to  be  handed  to  a  black  man. 
Johnson  unquestionably  had  a  good  brain.  If 
he  had  pursued  the  same  course  as  Corbett  and 
stuck  to  his  own  race,  if  he  had  not  flown  into 
the  face  of  justice  and  made  himself  an  out- 
cast from  his  own  coimtry,  he  might  have  had 
anything  in  the  world  from  the  whites  and 
the  blacks  1  But  no!  He  failed  to  grasp  his 
opportunity,  and  his  race  has  been  compelled 
to  bear  with  him  the  burden  of  the  obloquy 
he  has  incurred. 

After  the  fight  at  Havana,  JViUard  returned 


806        THE  FIGHTING  MAN 

to  the  United  States.  He  was  met  with  open 
arms.  He  traveled  with  a  circus  for  a  whole 
summer,  earning  from  one  to  two  thousand 
dollars  a  day,  and  finally  arranged  a  contest 
with  Frank  Moran,  who  had  fought  Johnson 
in  Paris,  to  take  place  at  Madison  Square  Gar- 
den in  ten  rounds,  this  heing  the  limit  allowed 
by  the  laws  of  New  York  State. 

I  saw  the  contest.  If  it  had  been  fought 
to  a  finish,  Moran  would  have  won.  It  was  the 
tamest  battle  between  two  heavyweights  that 
I  have  ever  seen.  JMoran  did  all  the  fighting. 
Right  after  the  event  I  prophesied  that  should 
iWillard  ever  come  into  the  ring  again  with  a 
man  anywhere  near  his  class,  he  would  surely 
be  defeated.  I  argued  that  because  of  his  enor- 
mous weight  and  the  fact  that  he  will  probably 
lake  on  more  fat,  which  would  bring  him  up  to 
over  three  hundred  pounds,  it  would  be  impos- 
sible for  him  to  reduce  himself  to  efficient  B[ght- 
ing  weight  again. 

Verily,  it  seems  the  way  of  the  prize-fighter 
is  not  always  a  happy  one.  In  few  cases  has  its 
end  justified  the  promise  of  its  beginning. 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        207 

Boxing  men  rarely  die;  rich.  On  the  con- 
trary, most  of  them  die  paupers.  The  trouble 
is,  most  of  them  come  of  poor  j^arents  and,  un- 
educated in  the  use  of  money,  when  prosperity; 
comes  it  knocks  them  off  their  pins. 

Sullivan  made  considerable  money,  although 
he  went  broke  many  times.  Long  after  his 
pugilistic  career  was  over  he  married  a  woman 
who  has  a  frugal  turn  of  mind.  She  keeps 
the  big  fellow  working  and  saving.  She  has 
stopped  his  excesses,  rejuvenated  him,  and  he 
is  now  a  good  citizen  and  a  fairly  prosperous 
man.  For  a  time  he  played  around  in  small 
vaudeville  houses,  where  he  managed  to  make 
a  very  good  living.,  He  is  now  preaching  tem- 
perance with  great  success  on  the  Chautauqua 
Circuit. 

Corbett  is  fairly  well  fixed.  His  mind 
turned  to  real  estate,  and  with  one  or  two  ex- 
ceptions his  deals  have  been  successful.  Out 
of  the  profits  of  the  Sullivan  battle,  on  the  ad- 
vice of  some  of  his  influential  New  York 
friends,  he  bought  a  piece  of  property  on 
Jerome  Avenue  and  paid  twenty-nine  thou- 


BOS        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

sand  dollars  for  it.  [But  after  a  while  he  got 
tired  of  waiting  for  the  to^vn  to  grow  out  to 
the  roadhouse  that  he'd  purchased,  and  sold 
the  place  for  about  seventeen  thousand  dollars. 
Since  then  there  was  a  boom  in  the  B^ronx, 
and  the  same  property  is  now  valued  at  abouij 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  thousand  dollars. 
Later  on  he  purchased  a  piece  of  property  aD 
QBayside,  Long  Island,  for  ten  thousand  dol- 
lars. This  property  is  now  worth  forty  thou-* 
sand  dollars.  Corbett  still  makes  a  handsome 
living  in  vaudeville. 

Jeffries  is  the  richest  of  them  all.  Before 
and  after  and  in  connection  with  his  battle  with 
Johnson  he  cleaned  up  at  least  two  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  dollars.  He  married  a 
German  girl,  and  she  takes  good  care  of  every 
dollar  that  he  lays  his  hands  on.  He  is  one 
of  the  town  curiosities  of  Los  Angeles,  where 
he  lives  and  runs  a  saloon.  Jeffries*  father, 
who  was  a  strolling  hallelujah  shouting 
preacher,  and  his  mother  live  with  the  ex- 
champion,  and  are  well  cared  for. 

Fitzsimmons  is  broke — probably  always  will 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        209; 

he  broke.  It  was  easy  come,  easy  go,  with 
him.  I  saw  him  the  other  day  in  one  of  the 
up-town  cafes,  and  it  was  very  evident  that 
he  was  short  of  this  world's  goods. 

One  of  the  saddest  sights  on  Broadway  these 
days  is  the  broken-down,  poverty-stricken  con- 
dition of  a  wonderful  boxer  who  came  from 
Australia,  met  all  comers  in  this  coimtry,  and 
was  simply  a  sensation.  I  refer  to  "Young 
Griif  o."  Those  who  remember  him  will  admit 
that  he  was  probably  the  most  wonderful  mas- 
ler  of  the  art  of  self-defense  that  was  ever 
bom.  With  no  strength,  no  punching  ability, 
he  would,  week  after  wieek,  meet  men  twice 
as  strong  and  a  great  deal  heavier  than  him- 
self and  get  the  verdict  through  his  science 
alone.  He  is  now  a  broken-down  wreck — col- 
larless  and  sometimes  coatless,  he  walks  up  and 
down  the  Rialto,  a  frightful  sight  indeed! 

Another  one — not  quite  so  bad — who  is  still 
in  evidence  along  the  "White  Lights"  is 
Young  Corbett — ^no  relation  to  "Jim" — whose 
sensational  victory  over  Terry  JIcGovem 
made    him    champion.      He,    too,    has    gone 


210        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

down  the  sad  road  that  leads  to  forgetful- 
ness. 

Jim  Hall  has  gone  away,  and  nobody  knows 
whether  he  is  alive  or  dead.  He  has  nothing 
and  is  little  better  than  a  tramp.  Charley 
Mitchell  I  saw  at  OBrighton,  ^England,  last 
summer — a  wrecK^  I  doubt  that  he  will  live 
another  year.  He  has  gone  through  every 
dollar  he  ever  made.  Billy  Delaney  is  dead, 
and  Connie  McVey  has  just  now  been  made 
stage  doorkeeper  at  one  of  my  Forty-eighth 
Street  theaters. 

Frank  Slavin  is  a  rich  man  off  in  the  Klon- 
dike. [Billy  Muldoon  runs  a  famous  health  re- 
sort in  Westchester.  Charles  Kid  McCoy  will 
always  be  able  to  take  care  of  himself,  as  he 
is  wise  and  a  good  business  man. 


VII 

After  out  experience  with  the  sangerfest 
people  in  Cincinnati  I  quit  pugilism  for  good 
and  alL  There  was  nothing  in  it  for  me.  I 
verily  helieve,  if  I  had  never  entered  this  Held, 
I  would  have  been  much  farther  along  in  my 
theatrical  career,  since  devotion  to  pugilism 
not  only  took  up  a  vast  deal  of  my  time,  but 
being  identified  with  it  impaired  my  prestige 
as  a  producer  of  high-class  plays.  As  far  as 
the  money  I  made  in  pugilism  is  concerned,  it 
was  a  matter  of  "quick  come,  quick  go." 

I  determined  to  confine  my  efforts  to' the  the- 
atrical business  proper,  that  is,  the  production 
of  plays  and  the  management  of  playhouses, 
[But  two  things  occurred  which  gave  promise 
of  so  great  profits  as  temporarily  to  divert  me 
from  this  purpose. 

When  the  St.  Louis  World^s  Fair  was  be- 
ing projected  by  Governor  Francis  and  other 

211 


212        THE    fighting;   MAN 

prominent  citizens,  they  were  approached  by 
Captain  A.  N.  Lewis,  a  British  officer,  who 
suggested  to  them  that  a  reproduction  of  the 
battles  of  the  Boer  War,  which  had  just  ended, 
would  make  a  big  feature  of  the  Fair.  And 
the  captain  offered,  pro\aded  they  capitalize 
him,  to  go  to  South  Africa,  collect  the  war 
heroes  from  both  sides — Dutch  and  English 
— and  bring  them  to  SL  Louis  and  make  a 
show  out  of  them.  This  sounded  good,  and 
a  number  of  St.  Louis  business  men,  headed 
by  a  Mr.  Wall,  of  the  Meyer  drug  concern, 
got  together  and  delegated  Lewis  to  go  to 
South  Africa  and  carry  out  his  idea. 

Lewis  was  a  man  of  wonderful  imagination, 
but  little  executive  ability.  He  hired  a  ship 
at  Cape  Town,  put  his  four  or  five  hundred 
heroes  on  board  and  then  found  that,  through 
some  misujiderstanding  with  his  principals,  he 
had  run  short  of  money.  However,  the  cap- 
tain of  the  ship,  believing  Lewis"  story,  took 
pity  on  him  and  brought  the  entire  outfit  to 
the  United  States  in  pawn.  When  they  ar- 
rived the   St.   Louis  people  paid  the  pawn 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        218 

money,  released  them  from  captivity  and 
brought  them  on  to  the  Fair  Grounds. 

Among  the  heroes  that  Lewis  succeeded  in 
bringing  over  here  for  this  show  purpose  was 
General  Cronje,  who  was  unquestionably  the 
great  hero  of  the  Boer  War.  Also  he  brought 
General  Viljoen,  who  is  at  present  figuring 
in  the  troubles  in  Mexico,  and  who,  in  fact, 
was  one  of  the  mainstays  of  the  late  President 
Madero.  Another  was  Captain  Jack  Hendon, 
who  had  been  charged  by  Lord  Roberts  with 
dynamiting  English  hospital  trains.  There 
were  at  least  two  hundred  Boers  and  two  hun- 
dred Englishmen  in  the  outfit,  but  beyond 
Captain  Lewis  and  Major  Danby  the  histori- 
cal celebrities  were  all  furnished  by  the  Dutch. 

As  Lewis  had  predicted,  this  outfit  became 
at  once  the  great,  big,  original  feature  of  the 
Exposition.  It  even  surpassed  in  interest  the 
Philippine  exhibit  where  hundreds  of  Amer- 
ican men  and  women  used  to  assemble  each 
day  to  watch  the  natives  burn  a  dog  alive  and 
eat  it.  Almost  immediately,  however,  the  gov- 
ernment put  a  stop  to  this  practise. 


214        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

So  great  was  the  success  of  the  miniature 
Boer  War  that  it  became  the  talk  of  the  coun- 
try, and  my  attention  was  called  to  it  by  Mr. 
Orlando  Harriman,  brother  of  the  late  E.  H. 
Harriman.  Mr.  Harriman  had  an  option  on 
all  of  the  then  swamp  land  that  lay  between 
the  Brighton  Beach  Hotel  and  the  Manhattan 
Beach  Hotel  at  Coney  Island.  He  told  me 
that  if  I  would  help  him  get  control  of  the 
"Boer  War"  he  would  buy  the  land  and  we 
would  install  it  there  as  a  summer  attraction. 
I  told  him  that  if  I  went  into  any  scheme  like 
that  I  would  have  to  have  a  half  interest  in 
the  land  as  well  as  in  the  show.  To  this  he 
agreed.  So  we  did  fill  in  the  marsh  and  we 
did  install  the  "Boer  War."  And  the  way  of 
our  doing  it  was  as  follows : 

We  paid  four  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
dollars  for  the  property.  On  this  we  left  a 
mortgage  of  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  and 
borrowed  two  hundred  thousand  dollars  more 
on  a  second  mortgage.  Harriman's  commis- 
sion for  selling  the  land — he  was  the  agent — 
was  fifty  thousand  dollars.     The  difference 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        215 

between  the  sum  of  the  two  mortgages  and 
the  amount  paid  for  the  land  was  represented 
in  Harriman's  commission.  To  make  the 
transaction  technically  correct  I  borrowed  a 
certified  check  of  fifty  thousand  dollars  from 
my  bank,  which  made  up  the  amount  to  be 
paid.  Then  we  were  handed  back  Harriman's 
commission — fifty  thousand  dollars — and  I  re- 
deposited  it  in  the  bank  that  had  loaned  me  the 
certified  check.  So  we  came  into  possession 
of  this  land  without  putting  up  a  nickel! 

Eut  when,  after  putting  through  the  real 
estate  deal,  I  went  to  St.  Louis  to  carry  out 
the  Boer  War  end  of  the  transaction,  I  found 
that  Mr.  Wall — the  head  of  the  great  drug 
firm — had  developed  mighty  ambitions  as  a 
showman.  He  figured  out  that  if  the  Boer 
War  was  such  a  great  success  in  St.  Louis, 
he  could  take  it  through  the  South  and  West 
— a  la  Buffalo  Bill  and  the  Barnum  circus — 
during  the  following  winter  and  summer, 
and  reap  a  rich  harvest  of  shekels.  This,  of 
course,  put  a  damper  on  my  scheme.  But  I 
reconnoitered  a  bit  and  foimd  out  two  very 


216        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

important  things.  First,  that  Mr.  Wall  and 
Captain  Lewis  were  at  loggerheads;  and  sec- 
ond, that  Lewis  had  made  a  contract  with  Gen- 
eral Cronje  that  was  to  begin  immediately  the 
Fair  was  over.  Now,  Cronje  was  the  star  of 
the  whole  proposition.  He  appeared  daily  in 
the  show,  rode  around  the  track  and  over  to 
a  miniature  Lord  Roberts  and  surrendered  as 
he  did  in  the  real  war.  Without  this  great  man 
as  a  figurehead,  it  was  clear  that  the  show 
would  have  no  value  at  all.  Lewis  was  to 
pay  the  old  gentleman  one  thousand  five  hun- 
dred dollars  a  month  and  his  wife  twenty  dol- 
lars a  week.  So  I  made  a  combination  with 
Lewis  and  then  approached  Wall  with  the 
scheme  that  he  should  bring  the  Boer  War  to 
[Brighton  Beach  the  following  summer.  But 
the  idea  of  taking  the  outfit  through  the  South 
had  become  an  obsession  with  this  very  excel- 
lent drug  man,  and  I  found  that  I  could  make 
no  deal  with  him  at  all.  My  experience  as  a 
showman  told  me  that  such  a  move  on  Wall's 
part  meant  nothing  but  ruin  and  that  if  I 
waited  imtil  he  had  tried  his  scheme  out  I 


ooryntOMT,  •down  •ho». 


General  Viljoen 


THE   FIGHTINa   MAN        51? 

could  make  my  own  terms — which  ultimately 
came  true. 

Meantime  Lewis  had  got  hold  of  Viljoen 
also,  and  the  whole  affair  was  left  in  a  most 
chaotic  condition.  Everything  was  up  in  the 
air.  To  make  matters  worse,  there  was  con- 
stant danger  of  a  row  between  the  Boers  and 
the  English.  They  had  to  keep  the  two  ex- 
enemies  apart.  Any  night  there  was  apt  to 
be  a  real  war  and  ten  or  fifteen  killed.  The 
principal  objection  the  English  soldiers  had 
to  the  whole  arrangement  under  which  they 
were  working  was  that  Captain  Hendon,  who 
had  been  brought  over  without  their  knowl- 
edge, was  employed  around  the  show  in  a  busi- 
ness capacity.  Hendon,  they  claimed,  had  been 
the  means  of  killing  hundreds  of  Englishmen, 
and  they  strenuously  kicked  about  having  him 
around  the  place  at  all. 

Finding  Wall  obdurate,  we  told  him  that 
unless  he  would  make  some  sort  of  terms  with 
us,  we  would  organize  a  new  Boer  War,  headed 
by  Cronje,  who  was  under  contract  to  Lewis. 
This  would  have  been  easy  enough,  as  there 


218        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

were  plenty  of  available  men  in  the  states  who 
could  ride  and  shoot  just  as  the  real  Boers  and 
English  did  in  St.  Louis.  Of  course,  he  could 
not  retaliate  by  saying  that  he  would  have  an 
imitation  Cronje. 

When  September  came  business  at  the  Fair 
dropped  off  very  sharply,  and  the  fixing  up 
for  the  road  tour  did  not  look  quite  so  rosy. 
I  knew  this  would  happen  and  I  anticipated 
the  effect  it  would  have  on  Wall,  so  when  I 
approached  him  to  renew  negotiations,  I  found 
the  amateur  showman  quite  amenable  to  rea- 
son. In  brief,  I  secured  a  contract  with  Wall 
to  bring  his  entire  outfit  to  Coney  Island  the 
next  spring  on  a  basis  of  seventy  per  cent,  of 
the  gross  receipts  to  him  and  thirty  per  cent. 
to  us — "us"  being  the  Brighton  Beach  Devel- 
opment Company,  which,  in  the  meantime,  had 
been  incorporated.  The  drug  man  was  to  pay 
the  people,  also  Cronje,  whom  we  still  held 
under  contract  as  a  means  of  forcing  Wall  to 
keep  his  part  of  the  agreement. 

The  Boer  War  started  through  the  South 
bs  per  schedule  and  met  one  disaster  after  an- 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        219 

other.  It  was  a  hard,  hard  winter  for  them. 
The  show  business  was  not  so  rosy  as  it  looked 
and  Wall  lost  money  like  water. 

Meantime,  we  had  filled  in  the  marsh  land  at 
Brighton  Beach  and  had  built  an  enormous 
arena  capable  of  seating  twenty-six  thousand 
five  himdred  persons. 

Along  about  the  middle  of  May  the  Boer 
and  the  English  warriors  arrived  at  Brighton 
Beach  in  a  train  of  freight  cars.     They  had 
made  one  jump  from  a  little  town  somewhere 
in  Tennessee.     The  cars  were  fixed  up  with 
hammocks  stretched  across  and  were  occupied 
by  from  fifteen  to  twenty  men  each.    A  more 
disorganized,  miserable  lot  of  creatures  never 
traveled  anywhere,  and  when  they  disembarked 
Brighton  Beach  looked  like  Heaven  to  them. 
They  had  had  one-night  stands  all  winter  long, 
without  any  pay,  and  when  they  saw  the  At- 
lantic  Ocean,   where  they  could  bathe,   and 
places  where  they  could  get  something  good 
to  eat,  and  the  prospect  of  staying  in  a  place 
more  than  a  day  at  a  time — they  were  indeed 
a  happy  lot  of  warriors! 


220        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

iBut  a  new  danger  arose:  all  had  it  in  for 
Lewis.  Lewis,  being  a  soldier,  I  had  dele- 
gated him  as  managing  director  of  the  entire 
outfit  while  it  stayed  at  Brighton  Beach.  He 
had  established  a  regular  camp  with  a  cook- 
house, hospital  tent  and  everything  else  to 
make  the  men  comfortable.  But  somehow, 
they  blamed  him  for  all  the  misfortunes  that 
had  befallen  them  during  the  winter,  and  they 
were  out  for  his  life  I 

On  their  arrival,  Boer  and  Englishman  alike 
made  a  bee  line  for  the  little  bar  in  the  Inn  at 
Brighton  Beach.  Up  to  that  night  nothing 
had  opened  at  the  Island.  Luna  Park,  Dream- 
land and  all  the  rest  of  the  show  places  were 
dark.  There  was  only  a  stray  electric  light 
here  and  there  on  the  Island,  and  it  was  a  bit 
stormy  at  that.  So,  with  four  hundred  Boers 
and  Englishmen  half  drunk  with  bad  Coney 
Island  whisky,  we  all  looked  forward  to  a 
lively  night.  The  cock  of  the  walk  in  the  out- 
fit was  a  tall  Boer,  who  had  been  a  wrestler 
in  South  Africa,  and  who  had  acted  as  the 
oiBScial  announcer  in  the  show.    I  realized  that 


THE    FIGHTING    MAN        221 

if  this  ringleader  could  be  squelched  that  night 
we  could  bring  some  order  out  of  the  chaos 
that  prevailed.  I  was  in  the  h'ttle  bar,  that 
could  hold  twenty  people  if  they  all  stood  up, 
and  into  which  some  fifty  were  now  crowded. 
The  wrestling  Boer,  half-mad  with  drink,  was 
leaning  against  Captain  Lewis  and  bragging 
about  what  he  was  going  to  do  to  Brady  when 
he  met  him.  In  the  midst  of  a  most  derogatory 
characterization  which  he  applied  to  me,  I 
stepped  up  to  him  and  said,  "My  name's 
Brady." 

Without  a  word  he  hauled  off  and  hit  me 
on  the  jaw,  and  I  knew  I  was  in  for  it.  I 
struck  back,  then  placed  my  back  against  the 
wall,  and  as  he  rushed  at  me  I  just  kicked  out 
and  he  went  in  a  heap  on  the  floor.  From  that 
moment  on  I  was  the  master  of  the  generals 
and  the  colonels  and  the  majors,  and  they  sa- 
luted every  time  I  passed. 

Our  friend  Wall,  the  St.  Louis  drug  man, 
attempted  to  recover  his  winter's  losses  from 
his  summer  receipts,  but,  while  th^se  were  ex- 
traordinarily good,  they  were  not  good  enough 


222        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

to  pay  the  back  salaries  of  the  men.  So  things 
went  from  bad  to  worse  until  about  the  middle 
of  August,  when  a  general  break-up  occurred. 
Wall  retired  and  Captain  Lewis  ran  the  thing 
along  on  the  cooperative  plan  for  a  fortnight, 
and  then  the  whole  proposition  went  to  pieces. 
The  horses,  cannons  and  gatling  guns  were 
sold  and  I  had  to  pay  old  Cronje  some  two 
thousand  five  hundred  dollars  that  was  still 
due  on  his  contract,  and  out  of  my  own  pocket 
send  himself  and  his  wife  to  Holland,  where 
he  afterward  died.  Most  of  the  Englishmen 
and  Boers  connected  with  the  outfit  made  a 
bee  line  for  Central  America,  looking  for  other 
wars,  as  they  were  all  soldiers  of  fortune,  and 
many  of  them  have  taken  part  in  the  petty  re- 
bellions that  have  been  going  on  in  that  part 
of  the  world  ever  since. 

The  cause  of  my  second  digression  from  the 
theater  game  referred  to  at  the  beginning  of 
this  chapter  was  Mat  Henson. 

Doctor  Cook  was  supposed  to  have  discov- 
ered the  North  Pole.  And  there  was  great 
excitement,  as  you  all  know,  at  that  time.    The 


Mat  Henson 
(Who  accompanied  Peary  to  the  North  Pole?) 


UNOIRWOOD  «  ONOtRWOOO 

Frank    Moran    training    for    a   bout 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        228 

doctor  made  a  lecture  tour  through  the  United 
States,  "playing"  to  fabulous  receipts.  He 
got  four  thousand  dollars  for  one  lecture  in 
Brooklyn,  three  thousand  eight  hundred  dol- 
lars for  one  in  Philadelphia,  six  thousand  two 
hundred  dollars  for  one  in  St,  Louis,  two  thou- 
sand three  hundred  dollars  and  two  thousand 
five  hundred  dollars,  respectively,  for  Cleve- 
land and  Pittsbxu'g.  In  fact,  he  must  have 
cleaned  up  sometliing  like  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars  in  one  month. 

Suddenly  one  morning  the  news  flashed 
across  the  country  that  Peary  had  discovered 
the  North  Pole  and  that  Cook  was  a  faker. 
Of  course,  there  was  a  sensation;  the  whole 
world  shook  with  the  news!  Yet,  curious  to 
state,  although  most  everybody  had  lost  con- 
fidence in  Cook,  he  still  remained  more  popu- 
lar with  the  American  public  than  Peary.  This 
was  wholly  a  matter  of  x>ersonality,  since 
Cook,  the  faker,  was  drawing  big  houses  and 
Peary's  appearances  were  meeting  with  disas- 
trous failures. 

Peary  brought  with  him  from  the  North  a 


224        THE    FIGHTING    MAN 

colored  man  named  Mat  Henson,  who  had 
been  the  explorer's  valet  for  years  and  who 
had  made  several  trips  with  him  to  the  Arctic 
regions.  Henson  was  a  very  intelligent  fel- 
low and  no  doubt  could  tell  some  very  inter- 
esting things  about  Peary's  trip  to  the  Pole 
that  the  public  does  not  know  of.  I  hit  upon 
the  idea  of  taking  Henson  on  a  lecture  tour. 
I  offered  him  three  hundred  dollars  a  week; 
we  signed  a  contract  to  that  effect,  and  he 
started  in  at  Middletown,  Connecticut.  But, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  nobody  up  there 
seemed  to  have  any  interest  in  Henson,  Peary 
or  the  North  Pole  either.  I  had  arranged  a 
grand  reception  for  my  man  and  had  paid  for 
a  brass  band,  which,  together  with  the  mayor 
of  the  city,  was  to  meet  us  at  the  depot.  But 
when  we  got  there  we  found  nobody  but  the 
brass  band  and  the  chief  executive,  and  in  state 
Henson  and  the  mayor  and  the  band  rode  up 
the  main  street.  But  nobody  paid  any  more 
attention  to  them  than  if  they  had  been  sau- 
sages I 

Henson  went  to  the  theater  and  opened  that 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        225 

afternoon  and  took  in  thirteen  dollars  and 
eighty  cents.  That  night  there  were  twenty- 
three  dollars  in  the  house  1 

Henson  had  secured  most  of  the  pictures 
taken  by  Peary  on  his  polar  expedition,  in- 
cluding one  taken  at  the  Pole  itself.  And 
Peary's  attempt  to  prevent  his  ex-valet  from 
using  these  made  Henson  a  bit  angry  and  he 
told  some  things  about  the  explorer  and  his 
journey  to  the  Pole  that  might  be  of  interest 
if  they  ever  got  into  print.  In  short,  Henson 
intimated  that  Peary  did  not  know  whether 
he  got  to  the  Pole  or  not,  and  also  that  he 
could  have  gone  to  the  spot  he  finally  attained 
the  very  first  time  he  made  the  attempt.  Hen- 
son asserted  that  Peary's  expeditions  were 
nothing  but  hunting  trips,  that  he  used  to 
bring  back  valuable  skins  that  he  sold  for  his 
own  profit.  He  claimed  that  every  time  Peary 
went  north  he  made  a  little  greater  progress, 
just  to  keep  interest  alive  and  encourage  some 
other  "backer"  to  fit  out  a  ship  and  send  him 
up  there  again. 

Henson  particularly  resented  Peary's  not 


226        THE    FIGHTING   MAN 

taking  another  white  man  with  him  to  the  Pole, 
but  instead,  taking  a  black  man,  because  he 
knew  the  black  man  could  not  and  would  not 
get  anything  out  of  it.  And  the  black  man 
never  did  get  anything  out  of  itl 

Is  it  not  strange  when  you  think  of  all  the 
glory  that  England  lavished  on  Scott  and  his 
heroes  and  Denmark  poured  out  on  Amund- 
sen, that  the  one  human  being  who  ever  went 
to  the  North  Pole  and  never  got  anything  out 
of  it  was  Mat  Henson — a  black  man  ?  He  re- 
ceived no  reward  from  his  government,  no  rec- 
ognition of  his  services  in  any  way  I  Nor  did 
he  go  as  a  servant,  either.  Even  by  Peary's 
own  account,  he  was  the  most  valuable  member 
of  the  company.  Strange  to  relate,  although 
a  negro,  he  could  stand  more  cold  than  any- 
body else.  His  knowledge  of  the  handling  of 
dogs  and  the  caring  for  provisions  was  inval- 
uable, and  he  actually  saved  Peary's  life  twice 
during  that  one  trip  to  the  Pole  I 

Two  nights  after  the  Middletown  failure 
Henson  appeared  at  the  Hippodrome  in  New 
York.    We  paid  one  thousand  dollars  for  the 


THE    FIGHTING   MAN        227 

building,  put  seven  hundred  and  fifty  dollars 
into  advertising,  and  took  in  six  hundred  dol- 
lars 

The  same  thing  occurred  everywhere.  We 
made  appeals  to  the  colored  people,  but  Hen- 
son's  own  race  would  not  support  him.  Within 
ten  days  I  realized  that  this  remarkable  man, 
notwithstanding  the  f^lct  that  he  was  rapidly 
becoming  a  good  talker  and  was  giving  an 
interesting  show,  was  a  lost  hope  and  a  fail- 
ure. So  I  compromised  with  him,  the  contract 
was  canceled  and  Henson  dropped  out  of 
sight  1 


THE  END 


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